


Between the Briar

by Rezz



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alfred is the worst deputy, Allistor has PTSD, Antonio is big gay, Arthur owns a bar and grill, Badly, Berwald is done, Carlos wants to trade his brothers for a corn chip, Elizaveta is v done, Emma just wants a boo, Everyone is determined to drink him out of business, F/F, F/M, Feliciano is to blame, Francis needs to stop flirting with poor bar patrons, Gen, Godlings, Herakles is barely awake like tbh, Himan Finland, Human Belgium, Human Czech Republic, Human Netherlands, Human Slovakia, Hybrids, I can't believe everyone's not straight the fanfic, Kiku is also not having it, Lovino Hates Everyone: A Fanfiction, Lovino is not having it, Ludwig doesn't find his deputy amusing, Ludwig is the sheriff, Ludwig needs patience, M/M, Maddie has a potty mouth, Madeline is trying at life, Mathias is like three, Maximo is big angry, Mediums, Michael needs a car, More tags to be added, Multi, My Brand of Mythology, Old Gods, Paranormalcy - Freeform, Roderich is a starving musician, Romeo doesn't know how to romance, Romulus needs his grandsons to move out like yesterday, Sadik is like a millenia done with everyone's shit, Shifter America, Shifter Mollossia, Shifter Texas, Shifters, Small Town Themes, Supernatural Creatures, The vargases never stop talking, Tino just wants to drink and celebrate the holidays in Summer, True Blood AU, Vampire Denmark, Vampire Sweden, Vampires, Victoria has her shit together, Werewolf Germany, Werewolves, Witches, a lot of it, and a very stressed gay, and low self esteem, animal death tw, bar fights are best fights, but that's just canon, death tw, djinn, drama with a side of sarcasm, except when he can't, fae, feli is sex on a stick and no one can tell me otherwise, ghuls, murder in my good christian fanfic, shit summary is shit, small town antics, the au nobody asked for, tino can hold his liquor, violence tw, will there be smex no one knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-08-10 22:36:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16463684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rezz/pseuds/Rezz
Summary: Mason Falls is just like every other small town in semi-urban Texas: completely normal. Normal houses, a normal bar and grill, normal sidewalks for their normal children, normal crime rate. All is well in Mason Falls. Sure, maybe the public has it's panties in a twist because vampires decided to stop hiding in the shadows and "come out of the coffin," so to speak, but everything in Mason Falls is just fine. The completely normal, average town of Mason Falls, where maybe, perhaps, possibly vampires aren't the only ones living in less-than-human circumstances that complicate the normalcy of their lives. The world now knows about vampires, and now the question on everyone's tongues seems to be the same. What else is hiding in the shadows? Those under the paranormal influence are bound and determined to keep their lives as human as possible, even when every known force in the universe seems to be knocking on their door with a shitstorm that threatens to tell them to take their semblance of normal life, and shove it.





	1. The One With Gas Station Nachos and ABBA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Where are those happy days they seem to hard to find?  
> I try to reach for you. but you have closed my mind  
> Whatever happened to our love? I wish I understood  
> It used to be so nice. It used to be so good  
> So when you're near me, darling, can't you hear me S.O.S.?"
> 
> \-- S.O.S., ABBA

**August 28, 2017**

**Marble Creek, Texas**

****

_“Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame. Darlin’, you give love a bad name.”_ Agáta leaned forward in her seat, flipping the radio off halfway through Bon Jovi singing yet another song about _yet_ another woman who wronged him. She scowled, arms crossed and pointedly ignoring the scent of fast food that seemed to have seeped into the worn and torn seat she fell back against. She was completely, undeniably, utterly, _any hyperbole of a word she could find_ , starving. She understood damn well how over dramatic she was being, but how else was she supposed to convince her traveling companion to quit being, as she would put it, a hard ass, and buy her something to eat?”

“Jozef, my dearest friend, my love, my closest of hearts, my right-hand-man-with-a-plan.” She cooed, sprawling across the console of her partner’s ‘97 pick-up-truck.

The man in question clucked his tongue, eyes trained on the road and the yellow lines that gutted it in two. “What is it Agáta?”

“I’m hungry Jozef. Feed me.” She laid her arms against the cold console and rested her chin atop them to fix him with a look. _The_ look. The look that got her what she wanted, without fail, every time.

He ran a hand down his face, from his wide forehead to his angular chin, with a long, exasperated sigh. He opened his mouth with a scolding on his tongue, dancing on the very tip, Agáta knew. She always had a knack for knowing just what he was thinking. It was one of the reasons their relationship worked so perfectly; she could read him like a wide-open book. Unfortunately for him, she used her uncanny ability to read him in the most inopportune moments—for him.

He was cut off, before a word could even manage to free itself from his mouth. “ _We passed all the restaurants,_ Agáta. _We’re not even close to a Maccy Donald’s,_ Agáta.” She spat in an awful impression of Jozef, right down to the way he always, _always_ messed up the names of chain restaurants.

He frowned, but said nothing. It wasn’t the first time she had reduced him to nothing more than pouting.

“I am hungry Jozef, feed me. I do not care if it is _gas station food_ , for Christ’s sake.”

“No.” He said curtly, pointedly avoiding eye contact in favor of examining the road for any imperfection to provide him with an ample excuse not to look at the scandalized look boring into him.

The little shit. How dare he think Agáta would relent, he should know better than that.

“Oh come _on_ Zef. We ate lunch like,” She paused, sitting up properly to dig around in her purse for her phone. She pulled it out, flipping it open and peering at the pale-blue screen. It was a crappy little flip-phone, with cracks in the screen running from corner to corner, but when she was given a choice between a road trip with Jozef or a fancy-schmancy smartphone, you can bet your ass she chose the road trip. It was a shitty phone, but phone it was. She groaned at the top her lungs, inciting a snappy, ‘ _shhhh_ ’ from Jozef. Agáta had a deep-set pout on her face, waving her phone around for Jozef to see. “Twelve hours Miláček, _twelve_.”

He grumbled something beneath his breath, batting her cold hands away and settling his eyes back on the road. He rubbed at the dark circles underneath them, ignoring the way the traffic lights danced across his field of vision. “There is Ar-vee’s on the highway.” He sighed. “You can wait.”

A weight settled in his lap heavily, and he spared a glance away from the road to confirmed that yes, there _was_ a person in his lap, and yes she _was_ making it very, very hard to drive. Agáta was halfway across his legs, a green-eyed ball of energy staring up at him with a pleading look that outshone her devious grin. Jozef wasn’t even surprised anymore. Agáta was a mischievous, irrefutable temptress and she knew it, the evil, evil woman. He should have known it, too, when _everyone_ warned him _exactly_ what he was getting into when he proposed to her. Someday, he was going to say no to her and mean it, just to spite her. And maybe, maybe he would almost follow through on it. Almost.

He narrowed his tired eyes and dealt her a long, hard gaze to give her the impression that her manipulative ways were, in fact, not as impeccable as she thought they were. She pretended not to see him reaching for the turn signal.

The silence, the game of cat and _oh-so-tempting_ mouse to see who would give in first, who would be victorious, was over the minute it started. Jozef erupted in a lighthearted grumble. “Fine” He muttered, “There is a gas station coming up, find something there. But, if we stop I am not driving when we get back in.”

“Good with me!” Agáta proclaimed, reaching up between his arms to boop his nose before she struggled back into her own seat. She hummed happily along to the radio when she flipped it back on.

_“Where are those happy days? They seem so hard to find.”_

_“I tried to reach for you, but you had closed your mind.”_

A grin plastered Agáta’s face the moment they pulled into the gravel parking lot of a brightly-lit convenience store. It looked like the kind of place to serve slurpees and stadium food, and boy did she have a mighty hankering for gas station nachos—chili and all. With jalapenos. Mustn’t forget the jalapenos. Jozef parked his rusty truck in the nearest empty spot, cutting the engine and rummaging around for his wallet. Agáta eyed his key chain, adorned with assorted keys to assorted locks and a pocket knife he got from an aquarium in Mississippi during their fourth stop on their Trans-American road trip.

“I will never understand why you bought that thing.” She mused, snatching his keys and taking the little tool off to turn it over in her hands. “It does not even have your name. Joseph? Not at all close!”

“It was cheap.” Jozef scowled at her and her outstuck tongue.

“What would this protect you from? Not even a fluffy baby bunny would be scared! A mugger would take one look and laugh in your stupid face.” She cackled, watching him climb out of the driver’s seat.

“If you like it so much, keep it then.” He grunted, closing the door and making his way around to help her clamber out.

She frowned and accepted his offered hand, hopping out of the truck and relishing the satisfying crunch of gravel underneath her feet. “Maybe I will.”

She tucked it away in the pocket of the jacket she had managed to steal from Jozef when she complained it was far too hot in Louisiana and he decided to turn the A.C. on full blast. Agáta thought it was only fair that she should get to take his jacket for his rudeness, and she did. Whether or not she returned it to him was another story.

The first thing she noticed walking into the store was the _lovely_ smell of coffee and convenience store hot dogs warming on their rollers. The second thing, was the unnerving way the clerk _stared_ at her. She shrugged it off, zipping of Jozef’s jacket for peace of mind and inching closer to her favorite Slovakian. She felt the clerk’s eyes follow them to the back of the store where the refrigerators were, until they turned where a shelf hid them from his view. She released a small breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Some people were just plain creepy. The man’s gaze left her on edge, but she chalked it up to her general social anxiety to strange men. One too many news stories about innocent girls and despicable people tend to make a person wary.

Jozef pulled open a fridge, glazing over an assortment of energy drinks before settling on a Monster. Agáta frowned at him with a raised brow, “I can drive Zef, you can sleep. Why are you getting a Monster?”

He snorted, turning the cold can over in his hands. “Because, I am going to need something to keep me up until I get us to the hotel. You drive like mad woman.”

She gasped in faux appall, throwing open a drive and grabbing a pink lemonade. “How dare you, my driving is best.”

“Say what you will,” He laughed, brilliant and genuine, eyeing a display case of pastries near the nachos and hotdogs, “but I do not have death wish. Not tonight. Maybe other night.”

She stuck her tongue out when his back turned, hissing playfully. “ _Ass_.”

Jozef didn’t grace her with a response, using a pair of plastic gons to pick out two brightly iced donuts. Being ignored only made her want to repeat herself, louder. Instead, she made her way to the nachos, grabbing a paper bowl and ripping into a bag of chips. She applied cheese to her nachos very liberally, two parts cheese, one part chips, topped off with a few jalapenos and a generous amount of chili.

“Jozef, you want nachos?” She asked over her shoulder, licking some cheese that managed its way onto her slender, tan fingers.

Silence. Agáta turned around, heart in her throat, only to find Jozef peering into a tiny fridge on the counter behind her. Perhaps _she_ was the one that needed a nap, if only to settled her nerves.

“Check it out.” He grinned at her, dragging her out of her thoughts and pointing inside the unlabeled fridge. “True Blood.”

She frowned, furrowing her brows. “True Blood?”

She shuffled next to him to look at the bottles arranged neatly in rows. Jozef nodded, “Yeah, it is vampire drink.”

She made a small noise, hands cupped to see better through the foggy glass. “Vampire? Like, dangers? I didn’t know there were even vampires around here…” She shook her head dismissively and took the Slovakian man’s hand in hers, “Ready to go?”

Agáta looked up at Jozef with a grin, expecting a smile to match hers. Something was not quite right, perhaps it was the wide-eyed, dead-ahead stare, or how perfectly still he was. He must have spilled a drink on himself too, she thought for a moment when she noticed the light, red stain that bloomed on his t-shirt.

He collapsed back, into a display of chips. Her mind caught up to reality and she stared, dumbfounded at the matching red trickling from a pale Jozef’s mouth.

“You were wrong.” She snapped up to look at the clerk man as he broke the quiet, shattered it to sharp bloody piecesc standing where her best friends had stood, her fiancé. His Lucky Mart vest was blotched with red stains. Agáta did not had the sense to run, nor her wits about her, frozen to the tile where she stood in sheer horror. She let her nachos, her nachos that had smelled so _tantalizing_ to her empty stomach, slip to the floor. God, why didn’t she just settle for Arby’s? The clerk licked a set of glistening ivory fangs, staring unblinkingly _just_ past the willowy young woman. She dared to follow his gaze to her clenched fists, knuckles white from holding on dearly to a small, shimmering, gift-shop pocket knife with the _wrong_ name on it.

“That’s not going to help you, Little Girl.”

 

 _“When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on? When you’re gone, though I try, how can I carry on?”_ Berwald tapped a heavy beat on the steering wheel with his fingers, continuing long after the song ended and the radio blending into a quiet, humming static. It was no secret that he lived, breathed, and essentially thought in entirely ABBA lyrics, his few acquaintances could attest to that. The car radio buzzed in a soft, white noise that tried and ultimately failed to replace the classically golden music some poor disk-jockey on the other side of the country slaved over relentlessly to play. Sure, the ABBA station played the same forty songs on loop day-in and day-out, but Berwald appreciated. He was a man that resisted change, and that stood just as true of his music tastes as anything else.

His beat faltered when he took a carefully aimed spitball to the temple. Berwald’s eyes narrowed at the road, but he paid the man responsible for the spitball no mind. Attention was exactly what he wanted, and Berwald was not in the mood to supply it.

“Ber. Berrrrrr. Ber? Are you listening to me?” The spitball-er had taken to balancing his straw, his weapon of choice, on his nose precariously like a seal would a ball. He gave Berwald a pout. “Berrrrrrr, pay attention to me.”

“No, Mat.” Berwald frowned, refusing with every ounce of his being to look at the mean seated in the passenger’s seat next to him. He would not give in to his requests. Not in the slightest, lest he run the risk of losing what little self-respect he still had.

“Fine, Party-Pooper.” Mathias, a man of tall stature and short attention-span whined like a three year old. A thousand years, give or take, old and he still acted like was teething. “And here I was, just goin’ to ask you which town you thought sounded nice—but _no_. You have to be a big Party-Pooper Ber. I don’t know how we’re going to make friends when we settle down if you keep up that attitude.”

Berwald remained stoic and silent, an ability he had picked up and perfected over decades spent in patience. His companion didn’t wait for a comment, or even an acknowledgement that he was listening. Mathias continued on with the rant Berwald was only half paying attention to.

“I was thinking, we should get a house in the district. I mean, we are the sheriffs of area seventeen now. It only makes sense if we live in it, am I right?” Mathias asked aloud, toting an unfolded map crumpled at the edges where his hands held it open. It was covered in wrinkles and marked up and down in red ink. Berwald wasn’t sure how even Mathias was capable of making out what it said, but he was just as unwilling to ask. “Louisville _sounds_ okay, but it only had a Taco Shack and you _know_ what Mexican food does to my stomach.”

Berwald scoffed, against every effort of his to ignore the Danish man-child in the car with him. At least Mathias was busying himself with something reasonably productive, not that Berwald had any intention of allowing him to pick where they would relocate to. “Mat, yer’ a vampire. You don’ _eat_ , and you don’ make _human_ friends.”

Mathias, wild blonde locks stuck up in every direction possible, looked down right offended. “ _I_ care about what the humans I feed off eat, Ber. My palette is _very_ sensitive in case you haven’t noticed in our time together.”

Berwald rolled his eyes. Mathias had a hand thrown across his chest, scandalized.

“Louisville is a nope.” He decided, returning back to the map with his red marker in hand, making a big red X over Louisville, Texas.

Berwald grunted, focusing on the long empty road with steely indigo eyes. Mathias would eventually get bored of narrowing down destinations, he reasoned. It was easier to appease his whims sooner rather than later when he picked something _else_ , and potentially even more _annoying_ , to occupy his time with.

“Can you believe it Ber? _Sheriffs_. The Magistar appointed _us_ as sheriffs. I mean, it _is_ about time, but damn, I never really pictured us as sheriffs.” Mathias continued, marking Xs over a handful of other areas as he saw fit. A comfortable quiet settled in to stay a little while. “Guess you _can_ teach old dogs new tricks, eh Ber?”

Berwald was nowhere near in the same realm as Mathias, lost ten-feet deep in his own thoughts. There was no life-raft in sight, and land was far from on his mind.

See, Berwald was, in every sense of the word, not the _typical_ vampire. He preferred True Blood to human blood, for moral reasons Mathias never claims to understand. He out-aged most vampires around the modern world, too, and absolutely, one-hundred-percent, despised what he was. Well over nine-centuries old, he found vampire life to be very lonely, and it became very bland very quick. He supposed he was never into the idea of draining humans for the hell of it like some of the vampires he had met through his years. He supposed he should be lucky that Mathias had never picked up on the senseless murdering trend either.

Berwald was an ancient vampire, bored and displeased with being one. To say the least, the prospects and spicy of being assigned a vampire sheriff interested him. On the inside, at least.

It was a change of pace, he had reasoned with himself. A new place. A new task. A source of the slightest bit of excitement in a sea of endless monotony. Dare he say, being sheriff...overjoyed him. He was rocked by some intense fleeting emotion he couldn’t exactly put his finger on, and it shook him to the core. He felt like a giddy school-girl and he simultaneously loved and hated the feeling.

Change. Change was good. Even for a man who resisted change, some change could prove to be exciting.

Berwald breathed, clearing his mind and bringing himself back to the present. He took a glance in Mathias’s direction to check if he was still looking over the map. Judging by the elder vampire’s moving lips, he was supposed to have been listening instead of zoning out. Oops.

“W’at?” Berwald blinked, ignoring the way Mathias’s lips ticked down.

“ _Well_ , if you were listening, you would’ve heard me Ber.” Mathias snarked in one of the rare moments he got to be justifiably condescending over Berwald rather than the other way around. Berwald was not amused. Mathias frowned and held his hands up in mock surrender.

“Hell Ber, if looks could kill. _Okay_ , if looks could kill _and_ we could die. Fine. What I was _saying_ was I’ve narrowed it down to Marble Creek or Mason Falls. Take your pick.”

Berwald straightened, paying attention to the road. His brows furrowed, “Ya’ narrowed it down, huh?” Mathias nodded languidly, grinning and flipping the map around to display the fruits of his effort. Berwald was not having it. “Ya’ narrowed it down from the _fifty other places_ t’ live?”

“You know Ber, I don’t much appreciate your negativity. Here I am, _slaving_ over this map to find us a place, to _live_ , and I am getting _zero_ appreciation. You wound me Ber.”

    “Well what’s wrong with the other places? _Mat._ ”

    “I don’t know, there’s just something I don’t like about them.” Mathias hummed, arms crossed over his broad chest. His large nose stuck up indignantly. How could Berwald take all of his hard work and criticize it? He had his reasons for why some places didn’t make the cut. For centuries he watched their backs, could he not even be trusted to pick a _neighborhood_? In this day and age? There was no gratitude in Berwald, not a shred, Mathias swore.

    Berwald exhaled in a manner toeing the border between calm and homicidal. He had two options. Option number one: bury his feet in the mud as the saying goes and attempt, _very forcefully_ , to reason with the thousand-year-old man-toddler to let _him_ , who was far more capable of making _mature_ , _educated_ decisions, decide where they would be living. Or, option two: give in and keep his sanity intact. In reality, there was only ever one option.

    “Marble Creek. That’s where we’re now.” Berwald grumbled, staring down the dim radio screen. His deep blue eyes willed the static to break, play ABBA or Aha or anything so long as it kept his thoughts from straying to bloody, unadulterated murder that would only leave him with the same amount of problems as before, plus a dead body. The radio, the traitorous bastard, ignored his commanding pleas.

    “Marble Creek? Ber, do me a favor and take a look around. Tell me what ya’ see.”

    Berwald was driving, and the look he shot Mathias served as a reminder to that fact, but nonetheless he begrudgingly spared the scenery a glance. Traffic signs, a few run-down restaurants touting extended happy hours and convenience stores advertising ninety-cent Icees to go with your four dollar cigarettes. “Looks decen’ t’ me.”

    “Decent? _Decent_? Ber, it looks worse than that American speakeasy in Boston—you remember the one, with the _barlady_ , and the _millipedes_. Ber, it’s a shit shack out there, look—look, there isn’t even a sidewalk! Think of the children, Ber.” Mathias gestured open handedly towards the window, a v-shaped frown on his lips.

    Someone, please give Berwald strength. And patience. Strength and patience and an axe to murder the blood shit out of Mathias in the cold of night with no remorse. “Mat, we don’ have kids. We’re not a thing. Quit fuckin’ around.”

    “Someone’s cranky.” Mathias whistled, leaning back in his seat and against the headrest. It was a brand new car, brand new seats. The seats still smelled like new car and air-freshener.

“I’m just saying, it’s got to be _perfect_ Ber. Who knows who long we’ll be sheriffs? Live it up while it lasts, do it _right y'know?_ ”

    Berwald remained silent, watching a flickering sign perched outside a gas station offering free coffee past four in the morning and buy one get one True Blood, and he was considering buying far more than _one_. His eyes were straining, twitching at the corners. All of them. He couldn’t take it anymore, skipping using the blinker all together and swerving into the gas station parking lot. The fresh, newly-bought mini-van came to a screeching, abrupt halt in a makeshift parking spot. He put it in park without so much as a _glance_ in Mathias’s direction.

    “True Blood. I’ll b’ back.” He grumbled, slamming the driver’s side door before the other blond could get a word in. He cared for Mathias, he truly did, probably more than most brothers did. They had been friends for centuries, and despite their misgivings and issues along the way, they had each-other’s backs. But _holy fucking shit_ , did Mathias know just what to do to give Berwald a migraine. _Vampire’s don’t even get migraines for fuck’s sake_. Five minutes. A quick, five-minute break to splash some water on his face and buy some cheap, terrible blood was all he asked. If not for his sake, then for the sake of Mathias remaining undead with his head still intact.

    The first thing that hit Berwald like a wave was the heavy, rancid stench of grease as he pushed open the unlocked, barred door. The second thing, was the metallic odor of blood. He halted mid-step, bringing his foot back and one step closer to the door while he surveyed his surroundings. All was in order, sans the lack of a cashier. And, the smell of iron that threatened to prick at every single one of Berwald’s predatory sense like an open bottle of bleach to a virgin nose. True Blood, despite every intention, couldn’t do _that_ to a vampire. One glance told him the True Blood was in a small fridge on a counter towards the back of the store. A second one told him the clerk was not coming back anytime soon, if the empty, and very much open, register drawer was anything to go by.

    Alright. No cashier? That was fine by Berwald. Probably got tired of his nowhere job, grabbed the cash while he could, and booked it out of town. Berwald would just grab some blood and go, no big deal. That didn’t explain the _smell_ absolutely setting the nerves in his body on _fire_. He could smell blood, the real stuff, somehow, somewhere. He made his way around the checkout counter with his eyes sharp as blades, searching every inch of the store in his sight. He didn’t have to search very far. He stopped just short of the True Blood fridge, a puddle of crimson and a pungent way of iron stopped him in his tracks.

    The scene was not pretty. Gruesome, even for a centuries-old vampire. Lifeless green eyes were cast toward the ceiling, shiny streams of dried tears cascading down smooth tan cheeks. The body was nude from the waist up, rivers of blood running their way down porcelain skin. It had been many, many years since Berwald was ever disgusted by a killing, decades more since one had _disgusted_ him enough that he could be sick. His eyes trained on a trail of blood that led from a fallen chip display to a dead man not far from the brutally murdered woman. A hairy, tan arm reached with cold lifeless fingers towards the woman’s limp hand, mere inches too far to make contact.

    Berwald grabbed a four-pack of AB+ True Blood and tossed a handful of ones on the counter, using a few quarters on the payphone outside to leave an anonymous tip to authorities. His face was as pale as the dead woman’s when he stumbled back into the minivan, silent as a mouse. Mathias raised a brow, look imploring for an explanation behind the ghastly expression on Berwald’s face. “Not Marble Creek. Ya’ were right ‘bout it bein’ shitty. Mason Falls.”

    “Ah Berwald, you sly-dog! I knew you’d come around.” Mathias grinned, flipping through a newspaper. When Mathias had picked it up, Berwald had no clue, but nonetheless Mathias flipped it around and presented it to him like a meal served on a silver platter. “Would you believe I _just so happened_ to find a house in town?”

    Berwald knew it was only a twenty-minute drive to Mason Falls. But still, it was going to be a long, long, _very_ long drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agata -- Czech Republic  
> Jozef -- Slovakia  
> Mathias Kohler -- Denmark  
> Berwald Oxenstierna -- Sweden


	2. In the Long and Eerie Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred proves he can half-ass a job like no other, Madeleine cops herself some coffee and eye candy to go with it, and Ludvig has the longest day in the history of days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet  
> No matter where you live  
> There'll always be a few things, maybe several things  
> That you're going to find really difficult to forgive  
> There's going to come a day when you feel better  
> You'll rise up free and easy on that day  
> And float from branch to branch, lighter than the air  
> Just when that day is coming, who can say, who can say?"
> 
> "Up the Wolves" - The Mountain Goats

**** _In the age when the bright sun dominated the gods and the moon reigned over the land as queen, there was a great leader_ — _King Tekani. He was a marvelous ruler, beloved by his people, beloved by the land, a king of a paradise hidden away from the terrors of the old world._

_It was the night of his daughter’s bonding with Moahu, a brave warrior that defended her from a stray colaka_ — _elusive, spotted, bloodthirsty_ — _and thus, earned her hand to wed. King Tekani had selected the evening before the midnight sun for his daughter’s bondage ceremony, to commence when sunset’s red fingers shuttered the night’s curtains closed on the horizon. A great feast was prepared, a bountiful meal for every member of King Tekani’s followers to partake until fullness. Tekani’s beautiful daughter, Nina, was bound with Moahu at sunset, and twin marks were embedded into their skin with the ancient tools, at the clear plain of flesh where their collarbones dipped like sea waves, by the wise, all-knowing elders. In the scarlet light, Tekani rejoiced with his people, honored by the bonding of his cherished Nina._

_The feast stretched into the long hours of her majesty the moon, spurred by the people’s delight, the laughter of the children. It was tradition that a bonding ceremony end not with a feast, but with music_ — _boundless, endless music and the hymns of the spirits and old gods. Tekani himself had commissioned the highest priests and songsmen to craft pieces specially for the night of his daughter’s marriage, and so he saw to is that the spacious temple of the stars and jungle top was filled to the brim with music that reverberated through his domain’s entirety. His people took to song, dance, to praising the sun goddess and the moon queen. So, too, did the jungle sing back._

_Tekani basked in the glory of his land and people, once great conquerors, now a people of culture and civilization. Of life. The sun goddess herself shone down and blessed his domain. There was no toppling the great kingdom he had built._

_It started with a scream like ice water, a single scream like a candle in a dark room that grew into a roaring blaze. From the towering jungle lumbered creatures of evil, creatures who lived not under the reign of the moon Oae, who worshipped not the sun goddess Lia. From the shadows, they crawled like monstrous beasts of tar, limbs twisted, mouths screeching for blood to be spilled. The warriors of the kingdom armed themselves, women of spears and men of arrows. They defended the procession with courage, even as their arrows pierced flesh that sealed back anew and their spears snapped in the dark oozing bodies. Defend, the warriors did, but the creatures of the night overwhelmed them_

_The streets ran with innocent blood. Spouses protected their others all they could, siblings guarded siblings, parents gave their lives for their children to flee. One monster howled in victory as it let Nina’s precious blood, the crimson seeping down the cold temple steps like warm, dark wine. Sated, the creatures stalked back into the deep darkness they came from, and left in their wake death and sorrow._

_King Tekani kneeled at the foot of watchful Oae’s temple, felt the blood his his blood, his beloved Nina’s lifeful liquid, and cursed the queen moon for forsaking his people. The dead were buried, Moahu laid dormant Nina to rest. The lost wandered into the depth of the predatory jungle seeking death, and those that remained sought vengeance._

_Tekani looked over his once great land, and saw weakness. It was the same weakness the horrid creatures of the night had seen in his late kingdom, and he knew what had to be done. He gathered every able-bodied warrior who still swore loyalty to him, and on they trekked on a perilous journey to the peak where Lia was fabled to never set. Legends spoke that there dwalled an ancient shaman, one who commanded in her booming voice like thunder when they knelt at her feet, “What do you seek, my children?”_

_And Tekani, Tekani raised his words to the high shaman woman, “My people need a gift, one most powerful. The gift of the owanii, the brave ones, the strong ones the clever.”_

_The shaman woman knew what he was looking for, the old gods who still she held favor with had told her. “A blessing, and a curse.”_

_King Tekani was aware of what the shaman woman spoke, for with powerful magic came consequences high. His people’s salvation would come with a price, and he bowed his head to the earth, the mighty mournful king, and bellowed, “I accept, my people accept, I beg of you.”_

_The shaman bowed her head, a symbol of her own acceptance, and on King Tekani’s warriors gathered and angled the chains to the sacred earth. By the old gods’ will, the shaman fulfilled the king’s wished, and by her hands she crafted a magic most powerful._

_Of King Tekani’s warriors, Moahu was first to be blessed, hot grief spilling down his cheeks—Moahu, who had sworn_ **_teat_ ** to Nina _, the unbreakable vow of eternal bondage. The shaman took her powerful magic and poured it down the spines of King Tekani’s warriors, until the king himself groveled at her feet for his own blessing. Lia had dipped low in the sky, and on the line where the clouds kissed the land she danced. Oae took rule, and the blessed howled deep into the night. No longer man, but_ **_beast_** _._

****

**August 29, 2017**

**Mason Falls, Texas**

****

    Alfred F. Jones was not a normal man. He was super normal. The epitome of normalcy. The king of being normal _—_ crowned, adored, and unrefuted. He drinks his beers on Friday nights and quits by Sunday morning just like everyone else. He separates his whites from his colors on the rare occasion it’s his turn on laundry duty, like an average guy would. He mows his lawn to exactly one and a half inches, just as every other _civilized_ human being does.

Young, employed, and a family man _—of sorts—_ Alfred F. Jones was American to the bone and patriotic all the way down to his star-spangled undies. He was as normal as an average guy could get. An average guy that just so happened to shapeshift on a whim and occasionally go streaking through the woods on temperate, full-moon nights.

    “Jesus _—fuck_ . Whose fucking alarm clock is that? So _fucking_ help me, I’m going to shove my foot straight up your _ass_ if someone doesn’t shut it _off_.”

    Alfred blinked awake to a dusty _—_ God somebody really needed to dust soon _—_ white popcorn ceiling, bathing in the soft orange glow of dawn’s first light. He could hear shouting through the thin wall just next to his head of bed-mangled hair, the one that separated his bedroom from that of his dear, beloved sister. He could tell by the light filtering through the window blinds that it was early, earlier than he _absolutely_ needed to be up by. Someone had awoken his sister, and her raging temper. There would be Hell to pay.

    “It’s five in the goddamn morning, turn the alarm the fuck off Michael—” Madeline, in all her crankiness, Alfred could imagine, was sitting stock straight in her bed. A white and red maple leaf comforter pooled at her feet, a spark of Satanic fury in her indigo eyes.

    “Sorry, sorry Mads, my bad!” A voice hollered from a distant end of the three-bedroom, on and a half bathroom, house. Alfred, half dead to the world, acknowledged it to be the voice of his youngest brother—Michael. Michael, who at the ripe, mature age of twenty-two, still couldn’t turn down his damn alarm clock. Alfred and Madeline both had tried to the extent of their patience to teach him how to set an alarm on his phone, quiet enough not to disturb the _entire_ house, but their efforts went unrewarded.

    “Jesus freaking shit biscuit,” Madeline swore in a grumble. Alfred listened as she kicked her comforter to the floor and padded her way out of her bedroom into _his_ to shove at his shoulder. “Get up Al, too late to go back to sleep _now_.”

    Part of him groaned internally, mourning the loss of a few precious minutes of sleep. The other part was still waking up. He struggled to sit up, propelling himself from bed before his body had time to realize it wasn’t going back to sleep soon and have a coniption. He yawned, shuffling his feet against the cold, hardwood floor to a small closet as his sister left to get ready herself. On autopilot, he pushed aside a half-deflated football and a bag of once-used gold clubs with a bare foot. He dug through the closet’s contents, blinking away the remnants of sleep. He retrieved a tan button-down and a pair of brown slacks that looked partially decent. He tossed the garments on his disheveled bed, kicking up a used pair of socks to follow them, and a stain-spotted wife beater.

    Alfred slid into the bathroom that adjoined his and Madeline’s rooms, groping for the light switch and proclaiming victory when he successfully maneuvered around the hole in the rotten tile floor where an air-conditioning vent once dwelled. He had set upon brushing his teeth with half-lidded eyes around the time Madeline shoved past to snatch a towel off the drying rack on the door. The younger woman disappeared out the door and down the hall to lay claim to the shower before anyone else in the Jones brood decided to.

    He listened to his sister’s heavy footsteps echoing down the hall, stopping outside the only other bathroom in the house. There was a surprised gasp, like a mouse, to find someone else had called dibs on the bathroom. Not only was occupying the bathroom before her completely unforgivable, it was an act of war.

    She pounded a balled-up fist against the chipped door. “ _Ey_ , get out of the bathroom, I have to take a shower!”

    The bathroom door swung open unannounced, the second youngest of the Joneses slipping from the small, steamy room with a towel draped loosely around his waist to shield his modesty. “S’all yours Maddie.”

    Her narrowed eyes softened a tad at Samuel. “I thought you had work last night?”

    “I did.” He yawned. Of all of them, his blond hair was the brightest, and now it clung to his forehead in damp clumps. “Couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d face the day, ‘cause why not?”

    “Mhm,” Madeline murmured, half-interested, squeezing around him with a lighthearted ruggle to his hair. “Make some coffee, would you?”

    Alfred went back to brushing his teeth absentmindedly, rinsing the second her heard the shower turn on down the hall. He shrugged out of his TMNT t-shirt, marred by the ghost of pizza sauce’s past, and began the daunting task of actually starting his day, of which entailed getting dressed for work. He didn’t want to leave the comfort of his house, where it was acceptable to nap all day, like he _wanted_ to.

    He pulled his socks up to his chins, unrolling his pant sleeves to look himself over in the mirror. To his button-down, he was Officer Jones, Sheriff’s Deputy of Mason Falls, and right-hand man to Sheriff Beilschmidt. To the town of Mason Falls, however, he was still just the same dirty blond hooligan he had always been, leader of the Jones army of four.

    That was fine by him at any rate, he wasn’t a deputy for the starched shirts and the fat paycheck—not that the paycheck hurt, certainly not when you’re trying to pay rent and feed a small militia. But, he was a deputy to protect people, and as far as he was concerned he was cool with being a hooligan. Being a hooligan was mighty fun if you asked him, not that he partook in as much ‘hooligan-ing’ as he had when he was a teenager. As a deputy, he had certain standards to uphold, and he did. More or less.

    He ran a hand through his thick hair in an attempt to tame the wild beast. At times, he pitied Michael, who had dark, thicker hair like his, and envied Madeline and Samuel, locks light and fine. Before making his way into the den to cut into the kitchen, he plucked a set of glasses off his dresser, welcoming the sweet relief of solid shapes and sharp lines.

    Unlike most mornings, Alfred was not welcomed by the divine smell of freshly-brewed coffee. Instead, he found Samuel screwing around with the insides of the coffee maker. He counted way too many parts and pieces laid out on the countertop to have faith something wasn’t broken.

    “Hey dude, whaddya think you’d doing?” Al frowned, plopping down in a kitchen chair with a scowl befitting a man deprived of his morning joe.

    “Keurig’s busted, tryna’ fix it. Hold your horses.” Samuel grinned, examining a filter up and down.

    “Did Mike head out?”

    “Yeah, he figured he would high-tail it before Mads skewered him alive.”

    “Smart.” Alfred chuckled, reaching under the table for a muddy pair of boots, nearly identical to the smaller, clean pair resting against the opposite side. He stuffed his feet in, one at a time. “What are you doing up anyways, did Artie close early last night?”

    “ _Pfft_ , no.” The younger blond scoffed, blindly tossing the filter in his hands to the trash can. “Had the bar open past two, I just couldn’t go back to sleep after Mike’s alarm went off the first time. I got in late, has just gotten to sleep, too.”

    “Why don’t I smell coffee?” Madeline inquired, waltzing into the kitchen, and thus, the conversation.

    “Coffee maker is toast. Mike’s hot chocolate powder clogged the filter. It’s kaput. Dead-o. Rest in pieces.” Samuel quipped, rummaging through the pantry for a granola bar to satisfy his growling stomach.

    “God, right when I need a Nespresso to fall out of the sky.” She bemoaned, stealing the chair next to Alfred and slipping on the clear pair of work boots. Like Alfred’s button-down, her shirt introduced her as a deputy of Mason Falls.

    “Wouldn’t that break it?” Al asked, brows furrowed, fiddling with the dusty edges of a the floral tablecloth. It was a much-cherished gift from Samuel’s coworker Emma, seeing as how not a damn one of the Joneses seemed to have a decorative bone in their body. Their walls were bare of all but paint and photographs in Dollar General picture frames.

    “Shut up Al, let me dream.” She laughed half-heartedly, fondly fantasizing her prospects of having a Nespresso fall from the sky and rescue her from the throes of exhaustion. “Kirkland’s for coffee?”

    “Huh?” Alfred snapped to attention. “Ah, nah. You go ahead, Ludwig’s got this thing he wants me to look into. Called me about it last night.”

    “Suit yourself. I’m taking the Chevy.”

    “Yeah _right_ , the Chevy’s mine—you can take the Ford. The Ford’s cleaner anyways.”

    “ _I_ called the Chevy.” Madeline announced, eying the top left corner drawer next to the fridge. The essentials drawer, or so they had dubbed it. Home of keys, wallets, and the occasional pocket change if someone was dumb enough to leave money lying around—more often than not, Michael was the most likely to leave change on the counter, or in the laundry.

    “Too bad, it’s my truck.” Alfred frowned, following her gaze to the object of interest.

    By the time he registered the mischievous glint in her eyes, she was diving across the table to yank open the drawer and steal a keychain with a single key. A single key, belonging of course, to the Chevy.

    “Maddie I swear to God no—those are _my keys_.” He sputtered, chasing the woman halfway out the front door and narrowly avoiding a disastrous spill of Samuel’s orange juice across the latter’s v-neck.

    “You can’t deny dibs Al.” Madeline countered, grabbing her badge and wallet on her way out the door. “Bye Sammy, have a great day—don’t get in trouble or you’re toast, ‘kay? Love you guys!”

    The front door was slammed in Alfred’s face to the tune of Madeline’s lilting cackling, a groan escaping from the back of his throat. It was true, the Ford was _way_ cleaner than the Chevy, but Madeline knew damn well why the Chevy was better. Despite all its bumps, dents, and the mud almost permanently plastering it tire to tire, there was one thing the Chevy had over the Ford—air-conditioned seats.

    The Jones were a family, the men in particular, notorious for uncomfortably warm bodies. Something about the shifter genetics running through their veins led to sweaty asses in the Summer and shorts in the Winter, warmly.

“She beat you, again.” Samuel snickered into his glass of juice, snorting with an eye roll when he was met with a prompt flip of the bird.

    “It’s my damn truck,” Alfred grumbled, slamming the front door to the old house. Sure, the green paint had seen better days, and the shingles were a few beatings away from flying off completely, but as long as he could make out the red letters on the mailbox, marking the house as the home of the Joneses, then home it would be. “Who does she think she is, taking my truck?”

    He climbed into the five-seater Chevy, cringing at the feeling of sun-warmed leather, grumbling the whole way. He had nothing if not love for his siblings, of course he did, he practically raised them himself. As the oldest, he was expected to be the adult, the big brother, and when push came to shove at the tender year seventeen, a father of sorts.

    But _no one_ messed with his truck. Not even Madeline, not without paying of course. Thus, to the sweet, sweet music of Luke Bryan and George Strait, Alfred F. Jones, Sheriff Deputy of Mason Falls, plotted his course to the Sheriff’s Office, and revenge.

“Morning Madeline, what brings you by this early?” Emma, all blonde curls and sugar-sweet lip-balm smiles, cooed. Madeline let one of the heavy doors shut behind her, closing the distance between her and the bar counter and taking note of the few people in Kirkland’s so early that morning, chowing down on breakfast.

    “Mike broke the coffee maker, so I was hoping to get some coffee here?” Madeline smiled shyly, thumbing at the belt loops of her pants. You would think, after years of speaking with officials perpetrators alike as a deputy, that she would be used to the attention of a single individual. This was Emma after all, they were practically best friends. I wasn’t a rare occurrence for Madeline’s boots to tread on the red dirt outside of Kirkland’s Bar and Grill. No Friday would be normal without two-dollar pints at Kirkland’s. Missing such a thing would be blasphemy.

    “Already? You guys _just_ bought that thing.”

    “If I had five bucks for every time Mike broke something, I’d have enough money to replace _everything_ he’s ever broken.” Madeline laughed, rubbing the back of her neck bashfully and casting a wayward glance to the kitchen, gently hidden behind a brick wall of photos and hunting memorabilia.

    “God that’s the truth.” Emma grinned, scribbling down words in a language Madeline couldn’t read on a receipt before making her way to the kitchen window. With fingers as delicate as a musician’s she rang a silver bell, and lips like an angel she spoke, “Holly, brew some coffee yeah?”

    “Who the hell is ordering _just_ a coffee at eight in the morning?” Abel Holland Mogens, in all his disagreeable, penny-pinching glory, stepped out of the kitchen with a white apron tied around his waist. “What dumbass doesn’t even order some toast?”

    Madeline. Madeline was that dumbass. The dumbass that grinned ear to ear, whose eyes crinkled at the corners, whose cheeks dusted a lovely rose, who raised a hand and smiled meekly. “Me.”

    Abel’s violent scowl lowered in intensity, as if he wasn’t surprised to find Madeline of all people to be, in fact, a dumbass. “What, Beilschmidt can’t spring for some Folger’s or something in that fancy office of his?”

    “ _Oh_ would you _can_ it?” Emma intervened before Madeline could get a smiling word in to defend herself. “Go make some coffee, you’ve got nothing better to do this early—and quit being a _grump_.”

    Abel frowned, narrowing his leaf-green eyes. He sighed, but ultimately returned to the kitchen, taking the scent of tulips that followed him like bees to honey with him.

    “Ignore him, he’s in a mood again.” Emma waved it off. “You know my _brother_.”

    Emma and Abel were siblings. Two thirds of the Mogens trio, and as the oldest of three siblings, they worked their butts off to make sure the youngest one of the bunch, a sweet girl named Luca, had enough money for school. Little known fact about the bunch was their strong Western European lineage. The Mogens family was from everywhere between the Netherlands to Luxembourg. It took Madeline years of drinks with Emma to hear the story of her Dutch father who married her Belgian mother and had all three of the siblings in Luxembourg. It was well worth paying for the five margaritas leading up to it.

“Where’s that hunky brother of yours at this morning? And no, I’m _not_ talking about the insomniac. Or the _baby_.” Emma tilted her head to the side, those imploring lime eyes peering into Madeline’s very soul.

    “Work, Ludwig needed him in early for something.” She replied, listening to the cacophony of noises erupting from the kitchen like an odd musical. “Where’s Arthur at?”

    “Oh, Artie called in sick. Family emergency. Allistor was having another episode this morning.”

    “Guess that explains why Holly wants to be anything but here, huh?”

    Emma leaned on the counter with a roll of her eyes. “He’s always like that Maddie, he just had to get up an hour earlier than usual so he’s a _thousand_ times grumpier.

    “Coffee.” Abel grunted, slipping a steaming paper cup in the window. He didn’t bother to ring the service bell.

    Emma slipped from behind the bar counter, weaving around brick pillars and half walls to retrieve the coffee from the window. Madeline would bet her life and nothing less that it was medium roast, the way Arthur insists on having it, two parts cream, and three parts maple syrup. Just the way she likes it, and the way she had been ordering it since she was old enough not to worry about the caffeine stunting her height. She wasn’t a particularly tall woman, sitting well around five-two, but as a child she was convinced she would grow taller than all of her brothers, just to lord her height over them. Maybe her childhood aspirations didn’t come to fruition, but looking back as a grown woman, she almost regrets not discovering coffee _sooner_. But alas, she wasn’t aware that she drew the short straw, pun intended, in the height genetics department.

Anyone who would have bet against her would have lost, brutally. She concluded such, taking a long, conscious sip of her maple-flavored lifeblood.

    “So, Maddie. You and yours coming for drinks tonight?” Emma asked, raising a brow.

    Madeline smiled around her coffee, taking in the scent of syrup and the lingering haze of _tulips_. “Yeah, wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  


Alfred, despite every intention he had of ignoring how uncomfortably warm his ass was and instead drown out his misery with large doses of country music, was not in the greatest of moods. He looked at a small, tan brick building with glaring intensity for a solid five minutes, willing the hor, morning sun to blur it out of existence. Please. Five solid minutes of glaring at a building emblazoned in bold brown letters, Mason Falls Sheriff’s Office, before he begrudgingly admitted to himself that all the will-power in the world was not going to wish his place of work out of existence.

    He sighed when his boots hit the lot pavement. Long-legged steps spared him from the Texas heat that rammed its ethereal fire down upon the unsuspecting populace. His eyes welcomed the dim fluorescents of the Sheriff’s Office, sweet relief from morning’s rays of hellfire. Overdramatic, possibly. Did Alfred care? No. No, on this fine morning of too much to do and too little sleep, Alfred gave zero shits.

    “Good morning Al, oh—wow—you’re early.” Tino greeted, sunny smile brightening up the reception area like a lightbulb.

“Morning Tino, Ludwig’s got something he wants me on that couldn’t wait, apparently.”

    “Ah, well, you know Ludwig.” The Finnish man hummed, thick fingers clacking away at a keyboard. “Can’t put off until tomorrow what could have been done _yesterday_.”

    Tino pressed enter resolutely, leaning back in his rolling chair far enough that Alfred could make out the llama-themed ugly Christmas sweater he was wearing. Not a peculiar thing for Tino to don, but even _Tino_ usually refrained from the Christmas sweaters, in _August_. Usually. Alfred watched the sweater llama stretch and move with Tino as he reached around for a stack of papers, freshly printed. He slid them into an unmarked manilla folder and handed it off to Alfred with a smile. “Mind taking these into him when you see Ludwig?”

    “Yeah, no prob.” Alfred tucked the folder under his arm, fully prepare to make his way to Ludwig’s office when he spied a candy-cane in Tino’s coffee. Maybe he was losing his shit, or atleast, his concept of time. “Uhh, Tino? Did I miss something, and it’s suddenly December, or what?”

    The Christmas enthusiast looked up at him, following Alfred’s gaze to his sweater before the question seemed to click. “Oh, _no_. I haven’t done laundry in _ages_ and this was the only thing still clean of mine.”

    “O...kay.” Alfred turned his attention to Ludwig’s office and left Tino to file reports and complete the occasional crossword puzzle, stirring his coffee with one of the spare candy canes he keeps hidden in the top drawer of his desk, far from where Alfred would find them on his bi-weekly snack raids.

    “Come in Jones,” Ludwig commanded. Well, not so much commanded, more like grunted, but with his thick German accent they were one in the same.

    Alfred was halfway through the door anyhow. Customary things like knocking and asking before you raid someone’s desk for junk food were trivial things between people that have a) taken fire together, or b), are forced to shower in the same locker room. Not that if someone asked Ludwig’s opinion on the matter of Alfred’s bad habit of walking in unannounced, that he wouldn’t say it was unacceptable. He would, without hesitation. Bad manners were something a sheriff of Mason Falls, and Ludwig at his very core, could not possibly condone.

    “What’cha got for me that couldn’t way Lud?” Alfred claimed one of the plush, leather seats across from Ludwig, propping his feet up on the corner of the sheriff’s desk. He regretted the dirty scuff his boots left on the polished wood when he spotted the crease that grew between Ludwig’s bushy brows. A crease like that meant someone, somewhere, fucked up, and it was only eight in the morning. He removed his feet from the desk without an ounce of thought, adjusting his posture and attempting to wipe scuff away from his thumb while Ludwig was still distracted with the papers on his desk.

    Ludwig sighed, long and hard, blue eyes clear as the sky outlined by dark circles. “You say that as if you are not paid to come in at this time, normally.”

    “Touché.” Alfred trailed on, gently slipping the manilla folder onto Ludwig’s uncharacteristically disorderly desk. He, hands left unoccupied, twiddled his thumbs watching the older man look through the files, pleased.

    “I need you on a case.” Ludwig concluded, closing the folder gently and returning it to Alfred’s tan hands. “Heard the news yet?”

    Alfred raised a brow, drumming his fingers on the thick folder. “Gotta be more specific Cap’.”

The nickname, though not quite unfitting, did not go unnoticed by Ludwig, who simply narrowed his eyes in thought. “Animal attacks in Marble Creek, details are in the folder.”

    Alfred licked a finger, filing through reports and crime-scene photos labeled with dates at the bottom. The photo was taken the night before. It was gruesome, really. The couple killed couldn’t have been much older than even Mike. Both of them died grisly, and much, much too young. As Alfred traced the mangled figures, the nude girl’s corpse, the blood that clung to every inch of revealed skin. There was no way an animal ripped the woman’s clothes off, and not her throat.

    “What kind of animal attacks people in a gas station?” Alfred sneered, eyes alight in righteous fury.

    “My thoughts exactly.” Ludwig bowed his head, reading glasses slipping down his nose. Alfred was half tempted to crack an old man joke, if only to relieve the tension in the room. But, Alfred knew as well as Ludwig did, now was not the time for jokes.

“Fangers.” Alfred let the word leave his lips like the foulest of swears, hating the bitter taste it left in his mouth, and judging by the look that flashed on the other man’s face, Ludwig shared the sentiment.

    “The A.V.L. isn’t taking the fall for it.” Ludwig grunted, gesturing to the rest of the reports contained within the confines of the manilla folder. “I’ve got a job on the edge of town. Last night wasn’t an isolated incident. Animal attacks have been popping up in the woods bordering Marble Creek.”

    “They’re part of Marble Creek, but they’re still our woods.” Alfred growled deep and low, sharing a moment of eye contact with Ludwig. He didn’t use possession of the woods sparingly. The woods of Marble Creek were theirs, the shifters, the werewolves.

    “Mason Falls shares the woods with Marble Creek.” Ludwig nodded, “In a legal sense this is as much our business as Kawalski’s at the department down there.”

    “...Have you told your pack about this yet? Fangers in the woods?”

    Ludwig shook his head no. “I...I’ve been keeping a watch on it, but until last night I saw no need to interfere. It is why I need you looking into this, I’m not sure how I’m going to break this to Elizaveta.”

    “Break what to her? She’s probably seen the reports on the news.”

    “No, no not the attacks. The woman whose was murdered in the gas station was her cousin, Agáta.”

    “Oh. Oh shit.” Alfred muttered with wide crystal blue eyes. He felt guilt crawl from his gut to his throat, sitting heavy in his upper chest. “I...didn’t know.”

    “No one could have seen this coming Alfred, no need to worry about it. Just handle this for me, please.” Ludwig, whose face seemed to age ten years since Alfred saw him the day before, pleaded. A quiet vibration broke the small moment of silence, and this sheriff turned his attention to his ringing cellphone, putting the incoming call on hold for the time being. “If you don’t mind stepping out for a minute, I have a call to take. I’ll explain what I’m asking of your when I’m done.”

    Alfred frowned. That was something that irked Alfred about Ludwig. Five years of working together in and out of the force, and the older man still didn’t trust Al enough to take calls with him in the room. Made him wonder what other secrets, outside of Ludwig’s lupine issue, the man was still keeping from his left-hand man. “On it Chief.”

    Alfred left the small office quarters with the manilla folder, having no true intention of waiting through the duration of Ludwig’s call. The thought of vampires ravaging innocent bystanders in the same woods his own siblings ran in, didn’t sit well with him, not at all. He leaned on the edge of the reception desk, peering down at Tino with a far more awake and friendlier look. “Yo Tino, let Lud know I’m heading out to the woods near Baker’s park. Figured it’s a good place to start on this case.”

    “Stay safe out there, I’ll let Ludwig know, and Madeline when she gets here.” Tino hummed. He had taken a few peeks at the reports to get a gist of what was going on. It was a shame that can animal could do something so brutal to a young girl.

    “Actually, Maddie’s on patrol duty—some shitbag’s been breaking into houses in broad daylight.”

    “ Really?  How dumb are some people?”

    Alfred snorted, turning on the worn heels of his boots. “Hella. See ya’ tonight Tino?”

“Maybe Al, Lovise wants me to help her get Emy moved in, but if I’m free afterwards I’ll catch ya’ later.” The Finnish man grinned, humming a quiet Christmas carol to himself when the sheriff’s deputy departed with a loud laugh.

    Ludwig, basking in the serenity of the relative quiet, pushed his office door closed and dared answer the phone, breaking his own calm reprieve. “‘Allo?”

    “Heeeey hot stuff, what’s cookin’ good lookin’?” Ludwig could recognize that flirtatious Italian accent anywhere. The German man instantly regretted answering the call on speaker.

    He tapped the speaker button, pressing the cell phone closer to his ear stiffly. He couldn’t help the flustered hiss his burning cheek wrung out of him. “Feli, you can’t keep calling me while I’m at work. We talked about his honigbär.”

    “But Luddy I missed you.” Feliciano cooed from the other end of the line. Ludwig could easily see Feli in his mind’s eye, perched on the edge of the operating table in the Italian man’s veterinary office.

    “And it’s so boring today, seriously no one is here but me and the intern.”

“Feli I have work, you know this.” Ludwig sighed, hating himself for the smallest twinge of a smile that threatened to grace his features with every word the Italian practically sang. He has work to do, so, so much work. He shouldn’t be encouraging this, distraction from his duties. It was simply something an officer of the law could not allow. “Liebling, I love you, I do, but I really, really have to work. It’s important.”

Ludwig could hear the pout in Feliciano’s tone, the puppy dog eyes that could bring him to his knees. “Luddy, are you sure you can’t talk? Even for just a little bit?”

    God give Ludwig strength, because he was being a weak ass bitch and he knew it. No, he had to stand firm he told himself. He had a job and said job needed to get done, Italian lovers aside. “No Feli, I have work to do.”

    “Aww Luddy...fine. You bore.” Feliciano groaned into the receiver, “Will I at least see you at the meeting tonight? Please?”

    The blonde let the smile he was holding back run rampant with a relieved breath. “Yes Liebling, I will be there. I’m the pack leader, I have to be.”

    “You better be,” Feliciano joked with a playful tone, “any more of this torture and I may just have to flirt with the intern, and she’s ten times the party pooper you are.”

    “Honigbär,” Ludwig bemoaned. “Your intern’s half your age, and you're not into women.”

    “Oh, so because I’m not as young as I used to be I can’t land a younger woman? I got you didn’t I?”

    Ludwig’s cheeks burned scarlet. He could not take much more of the endearing teases. “Yes, yes you did. And what a lucky man I am.”

“You’re damn right.” Feliciano scoffed. “So, if I pick you up for the meeting, how long would I have to wait to get you out of those stuffy clothes Mr. Sheriff?”

    “Liebling. Work? Please.”

    “God, fine. It was worth a shot. Maybe I just need to get you hot and bothered.” Feliciano mused with a devilish smirk that managed to carry upon the very syllables leaving his mouth.

    Now, more than ever before, Ludwig was eternally grateful for the secluded privacy his office provided. “Later, Liebe, I promise.”

    “I’m holding you to that, butt face.” His lover resolved, whispering a sweet goodbye in his mother tongue before leaving the blonde man to his work and the grueling day that threatened to swallow Ludwig whole.

    Ludwig Beilschmidt, youngest grandchild to Aldrich Beilschmidt, turned to the rehearsed lines he had jotted down in preparation for the unfortunate trip to Kirkland’s he would have to make sooner rather than later.

    Tino had switched from humming Jingle Bells to belting out the lyrics verse by verse. Ludwig deduced from the shameless volume in which Tino carried his festive notes that Alfred had long since left the station. Rubbing at the growing furrow between his brows, Ludwig hand typed a quick message to send Alfred’s way before he would leave to find Elizaveta.

    **Warn your pack. This hits too close to home.**

Alfred, air-conditioning turned up to the max to combat the Texas August weather, was having a ball. His lips twisted into a Kilowatt grin, releasing an almost maniacal laugh. Oh, his day just got ten times better.

    Easing up on the gas and coming to a slow stop next to a dirty white one-ton, he almost skipped when he hopped out of the truck like a giddy school girl. He looked the white one-ton truck up and down, waltzed around the front to confirm his suspicions. The truck was parked dead in front of a fire hydrant, sporting a large Cuban flag on the back windshield. Tino had the right idea, it really was Christmas.

    Alfred smiled to himself, filling out a ticket for a parking violation. Now, Alfred was a friendly guy. There wasn’t anyone in particular that dwelled in Mason Falls that the man truly hated. That’s not to say, there wasn’t anyone he disliked, like, say, the asshole that worked the Stop ‘n Shop past ten every week night.

    Every Monday through Friday night, without fail, this one asshole with his cigar breath and his dreadlock ponytail mans the register. His stupid ass Cuban flag badge. His penny-pinching, no coupon-accepting, beer-insulting ass as if rum was better than an ice cold Bud Light. There wasn’t a single damn beer-run on a weekday that Alfred didn’t have to see the annoying ass Cuban flag dude. It was almost enough to make him reluctant to get a beer. Almost.

Now though, now was revenge time. Alfred stuck the blocking-a-fire-hydrant violation underneath the one-ton’s windshield wiper. Sure, there was a small chance that the muddy truck didn’t belong to Cuban-flag dude, but how many trucks in Mason Falls would don a Cuban flag? One.

    Alfred spied the ponytailed man down the road with a group of construction works, wearing a reflective orange vest. Someone must have noticed him lingering near the white truck, because someone wearing a construction helmet was motioning wildly for flag-man to turn around. Oops, he was busted.

    He booked it to the Chevy right around the time flag dude started running at him, shouting obscenities in Spanish. As someone that spent their entire academic career in the Texas public-school system, Alfred could tell they were not pleasant things to be called. He cackled, revving his engine and rolling down the passenger side window to shoot the man the bird. Driving away, Alfred turned the country station to the highest volume, drowning out the pissed off man screaming at him with the parking violation in hand within the sights of his rearview mirror.

    Oh, revenge was sweet. Sure, he probably wouldn’t be able to make a beer-run within the next month, but he also wouldn’t have to hear one more stupid ass comment on how he should spring for Bacardi, at least, rather than ‘piss in a can.’

    Next stop, Baker’s park. As far as parks went, Baker’s was the nicest one a small town like Mason Falls could as for. Huge, and completely everything a kid could want. Old as a donkey’s grandfather, Baker’s park was an animal reserve and a park combined. It was nifty in Al’s opinion, some old rich couple that owned a disposal company funded it and brought all kinds of animals to live on the land. Gazelles, buffalo-looking things, longhorns. It wasn’t a Sunday morning without some poor soul spitting his coffee out everywhere because another ostrich escaped the faulty fence and was digging in the trash outside. Perhaps the swing sets were as old as he was, and maybe the occasional ostrich went dumpster diving for two-month old Danishes, but the gardens were beautiful and the playscapes plentiful.

He drove past the Town and Country, the only grocery store within the city limits, turning into the park’s admission point.

    “Officer Jones,” the woman in the booth frowned, “what are you doing here?”

    “Ey Rayna, I’m here on official police business, gotta just get by for a bit.” Alfred grinned at the brunette in the tall booth.

    “Yeah, well, I have to see a badge to let you by.” Rayna Andonov joked. Rayna was a strange woman to say the least, a tan-skinned Bulgarian that moved to Mason Falls relatively recently, something around two, three years ago. By most standards she was still a young gal, perched at thirty-three. Three years older than Alfred, but you would never guess with Rayna’s baby face.

    “Yeah right, let me in dude—got a job to do.”

    Rayna nodded profusely, a quirk Alfred had noticed through their brief acquaintanceship. He almost asked her out on a date once, but after being subjected to a two hour long conversation about the perks of candle-making, he had to take a hard pass. The toll stop rose up and out of the way to allow Alfred to drive past. He only needed access to the woods, but there was nothing stopping him from making a short pit stop at the visitor’s center and saying hello to a few friends.

    He walked into the homey office building, more storage than anything else really, running his hands against the brick banister on his way in. The whole park had an eternal smell of winter holidays, even in the dead of Summer, and the visitor’s center was no exception. The entry was empty, empty seats and empty offices sitting untouched. Alfred heard voices from outside on the side of the building, where he knew the rangers washed the giant water trows. He was proved correct when he spotted a familiar head of dark ash brown hair through the windowed French doors leading to that side patio.

    A wind chime sung overhead when he pushed the doors open, alerting the two park rangers washing water trows to his presence.

    “Oh, hello Alfred.” Kiku, soaked to his forest green trousers with hose water, grinned in pleasant surprise.

    “‘Eyyo Kiku, Herakles.” Al nodded his head to Herakles who lingered next to Kiku, equally wet and looking all the more like a grumpy cat who took an unwanted bath.

    “To what do we owe the surprise?” Kiku, turning the water hose he was holding off, questioned. Kiku, in his sunshine-y, contagiously kind, magnificence—was not like any other person in Mason Falls. No, he was special. Out of the hundreds of people living in the secluded backwoods town, Kiku had the one, the only, the honorable role of being the best friend of Alfred F. Jones.

At a grand height of five foot five, Kiku Honda was Alfred’s best bro, and the latter worked tirelessly to constantly remind him of that fact. Fifteen years they had been best friends, right after Kiku and his own army of siblings immigrated to the United States and they were both stuck in the same shitty French I class. They were a bro-match made in bro-heaven.

    “Ah,” Alfred scratched the back of his head in thought, “Ludwig has a case for me, I have to get into the woods towards the back so I thought I would drop in, y’know?”

    “Somethin’ serious?” Herakles, a towering man of Greek origin built like an Olympic champion, rubbed at his eyes. Alfred knew Herakles well too, practically grew up since diapers together. He couldn’t tell you what the brunette’s middle name was or anything like that, but that didn’t change almost thirty years of relative friendship.

    “Animal attacks, up near Marble Creek.” Alfred explained, “Ludwig thinks it’s connected to an attack in a convenience store.”

    “Shouldn’t you call him Sheriff, not Ludwig?” Herakles mused, palming off his muddy work gloves.

    “Shouldn’t you be gardening or something else lame?” Alfred bit back with friendly venom.

    “Can it Jones, landscaping is calming and it pays alright, asshole.”

    “You know, I’m an officer of the law, you shouldn’t talk to me like tha—”

    “Hush it, both of you.” Kiku cut them both off, extinguishing the argument. “Was the attack at the Stop and Shop? Dollar General?”

    “No, it was in Marble Creek.” Alfred corrected, bowing his head. “But, the attack left two dead. One was Elizaveta’s cousin.”

    “Oh shit.” Herakles filled in where Kiku was left stunned and speechless. Nothing out of the ordinary happened in Mason Falls, or near it. Least of all a killing. “Elizaveta Hedervary?”

    “No, the other Elizaveta—of course Hedervary dumbass, she’s the only one in town.”

    “Shut the fuck up Jones, I’m tired damn’t.”

    “What did I tell you about talking to an offic—”

    “Both of you shut up and have some respect for the dead.” Kiku snapped in a rare moment of discomposure. He took a breath to steady himself. “Is that where Sheriff Beilschmidt is now?”

    Alfred nodded, biting his lip in shame. “He went to Kirkland’s to deliver the news.”

    “This doesn’t bode well with me.” Herakles sighed, tossing a small bucket into the last trow, freshly cleaned. His eyes stared at the sky like he was reading a message in the clouds.

    “Poor Elizaveta,” Kiku’s shoulders slumped, whispering. “she’s going to be crushed.”

****

    Ludwig Beilschmidt was never a man adept with emotions. It was far from his strong suit. Give him a pile of metal, and he could weld you the world. Give him a town to protect, he could protect it. Give him some tragic news to deliver to a woman who was almost like a mother to him all his life? You would be asking for disaster.

    He wasn’t good with delicacy. He was blunt, honest, critical, maybe even a tad cold, but he couldn’t help those things. A tough man with a tough exterior like himself was bound to have a problem handling things of fragility. He would mess it up, use the wrong tone, deliver the news in the wrong company. There were a million and one people suited to break the bad news to Elizaveta, and he was lucky number one million and two.

    He shuffled his feet on the wooden porch that wrapped all the way around Kirkland’s like a finished bow. His dress shoes, nice worn leather ones as shiny as the day he bought them, had all of his attention captivated. He couldn’t do it, could not bring himself to open the heavy double wood doors. So, instead, he would just wait patiently for the wheels of fate to drive him into an inescapable corner in which he had absolutely no other choice than to spill the beans. All there was left to do was figure out how the wheels of fate would back him into said corner—

    “Good morning Sheriff Beilschmidt, what are you up to nosing around here so early?”—Like Emma, sweet, sweet Emma, who has known him for years, catching him creeping around like a creeper. God kill him.

    “I—I, good morning Ms. Mogens.” He squawked, blue eyes just about bursting out of their sockets. “Just here on police business. Is Elizaveta around?”

    The waitress blinked, a box of mason jar glasses in her elegant arms from the storage shed next to Kirkland’s. “Yeah, of course. She’s inside, about to start her shift.”

    Oh god, someone smite him right now. Put him out of his misery. He smiled shakily, “Thank you, Ms. Mogens.”

    “Ludwig, our brothers were practical besties—you don’t have to always be so formal.” She chastised, setting aside the box of mason jars to fondly straighten his long brown tie with agonizing care, lingering between the touch of a sister and something far more romantic.

“Just trying to do right by his legacy, Emma.” He cleared his throat, stepping back—perhaps, a bit farther than necessary, perhaps not far enough—to open the Kirkland’s doors for her. Kill him. Shoot him right fucking now.

    She stepped past him, disappearing through the doorway to the otherside of the nearly empty restaurant, parents with their children and the elderly the only few patrons. Beyond a few tables and a bar counter was Elizaveta, making quick work of a plate of scrambled eggs. The warm smile she gave Ludwig made the knot in his stomach tighten and grow.

    “What are you doing in here Luddy? It’s barely eleven..” She grinned, glowing in that gorgeous way of hers, virtually releasing rays of compassion and joy. This was the woman who saw Ludwig through diapers, elementary school, puberty, Gilbert, and every second longer that she looked at him with those motherly eyes of hers, the more his pathetic resolve weakened.

    Sky blue met shamrock, and Ludwig knew he had given away the nature of his visit without saying a word. “May we...speak privately?”

Her smiled fell, her eyes clouded, and still she nodded in her powerful commanding tone, “Of course we can Luddy, there’s a door to the back this way.”

    Twelve puny seconds, that was how long it took for the duo to find themselves outside Kirkland’s, and twelve puny seconds was not nearly enough for Ludwig to gather his bearings.

    “What is it Luddy?” Elizaveta was on him before the back door could finish shutting. She cupped his cheeks in her hands, her calloused hands that spoke of a lifetime of hard labor, bringing his face down to her level and inspecting him over for any physical causes to the gut wrenching sadness his eyes portrayed. “Is this about the Bird -problem?”

    “No, no Eliza this isn’t about me.” Ludwig blurted, moving her hands from his cheeks and grasping them just barely in a consoling hold.

    Her eyes bore into his once more, a twitch on her lips, brows bent. “Well Luddy, then...what is it?”

****

“Hey Ludwig, how did she take it?” Alfred, maneuvering the Chevy through an old dirt-path surrounded by an endless outcrop of trees, held his phone to his ear with his shoulder.

    “Not well. I’ve told her to take the week off to recuperate.” Ludwig sighed through the phone, the fact that his deputy was driving and on the phone at the same time the last of his worries. “I have to go finish the paperwork so she can claim the body, no one can get ahold of her aunt in Europe.”

    “Sounds like a real shit sandwich.” Alfred, failing spectacularly to comfort, came to a stop just outside the entrance to the dense woods bordering Mason Falls and Marble Creek.

    “You have no idea.” Ludwig muttered, an eternal sigh in his voice. “Are you at Baker’s yet?”

    “Yeah Cap, right about to dive on in to the spooky woods. I convinced Herakles to follow me in a mule. Figured if push comes to shove and something’s lurking out here in the daylight, it would be good to have back up. Even if he is completely human.”

    “I’ll let you go, be on alert out there. Don’t lose your head.”

    Alfred had a comeback on the tip of his tongue, some witty remark or retort, but Ludwig hung up before he could get a word in. Rude.

    He left the Chevy, surprised to find Herakles’ attention invested in a set of animal tracks. He was even more surprised to discover a second set, going in the opposite direction of the first.

“What kind of tracks are these?” Herakles pondered aloud, running tanned olive fingertips along the prints. The wind was strong, and blew the few leaves that had already begun to fall, around their feet.

    “The heck you asking me for?” Alfred grumbled lightheartedly, examining the two directions the tracks ran in. They were big, and dried in the earth. They must have been made after it rained, when the rich dirt was damp and soft. There was no doubt that the animal that left them was large, large enough to leave such deep impressions. “ You’re the park ranger.”

    Herakles glared daggers. “They go two ways. This might not be the brightest idea in the crayon box, but I suggest we split up.”

“What,” Alfred mocked, watching the other man rise to his feet and dust off his pants. The wind tousled his gentle dark hickory curls. “you scared of a monster in the spooky woods?”

    Herakles fixed him with a dead honey-eyed stare. “No, not on your life.”

    They split up, Alfred readily taking the set of tracks that wandered along a better-lit part of the woods. Herakles didn’t seem have any qualms with the shadier path.

    Though he may talk a big talk, and a fair amount of trash along the way, Alfred was not entirely the fearless strongman he made himself out to be. He was brave, and he could throw a fair number of football players across a room without the strength being a shifter granted him, but that was not to say he was without fault entirely. He had his imperfections, like, example, a profound fear of horror movies. Horror movies where dumb teenagers made dumb decisions to split up in the woods where there was obviously a masked killer waiting to murder them. But, Alfred was nothing like the idiots in horror movies, he had his wits about him, and a hidden defense if the need for it arose. He could investigate the woods and hold his own while doing so.

He went five minutes without so much as breaking a nervous sweat, wandering deeper into the dense trees. Five minutes, before a branch audibly snapped in his vicinity. He startled, and then steeled himself. There were plenty of things that weren’t murderers in the woods to snap branches. Foxes, squirrels, cute little bunnies. No reason to panic over a cute little bunny breaking a tree branch.

    He kept moving, swiftly, because he was a grown ass man and he cowered from nothing and no one. That single thought alone kept him moving onwards with his head held high, taking mental note of every stone and leaf pile that looked vaguely suspicious. Until another branch snapped.

    He froze, turning around where the noise emerged from. It could have been him breaking the branches all along, he told himself. Except, he knew darn well he was not the party responsible for snapping twigs. His heart thudded against his rib cage like a large drum, threatening to burst. He took a step back.

And suddenly, the ground had disappeared from beneath his feet entirely, replaced with the sensation of a rocky hillside digging into his back. He was sliding, fast, and his startled shouting voiced to all those who could hear, just how unpleasant the whole predicament was. Gravity regained a still hold on him just as soon as he had come to realize, consciously, what had happened. He had walked backwards, and slipped off a small cliff down a rugged hill. Compared to the embarrassment washing over him, the soreness in his back was nothing.

    “Alfred—!” Herakles was back from following his path of prints, and apparently he was just in time to witness, either with his eyes or ears, Alfred walk off the hill. Oh joy. Wait . The snapping branches. Son of a bitch.

“I’m alive.” Alfred croaked, sitting up in a bed of pebbles. He pressed a hand to the small of his back to stifle the blooming pain. He made a move to clamber to his feet when his blood ran cold and his ocean blue eyes grew impossibly wide.

    “Alfred,” Called Herakles hollowly from somewhere atop the hill. The question that left him was less of a inquiry, and more a statement. ”Are you seeing what I’m seeing.”

    Alfred didn’t bother to grace Herakles with a response, numbly digging around in his pocket for his phone, retrieving it wordlessly. He dialed the number on his tongue without looking away from the scene before him. With parched lips he waited only for the man on the other end of the line to answer the call. “Ludwig, you need to get down here. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who returned to this shit show? The queen of procrastination and WIPs herself. You know what to do C;
> 
> Alfred F. Jones - America  
> Madeline Williams Jones - Canada  
> Samuel H. Jones - Texas  
> Michael F. Jones - Molossia  
> Emma Mogens - Belgium  
> Abel Holland Mogens - The Netherlands  
> Ludwig Beilschmidt - Germany  
> Feliciano Vargas - North Italy  
> Kiku Honda - Japan  
> Herakles Karpusi - Greece  
> Rayna Andonov - Bulgaria


	3. Nights Like These

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred and Herakles stumble upon something worrisome. Madeline loses a lead because an angry giant decides to take his frustration out on her. Ludwig's day gets longer. Arthur stares at his bar for a while. Berwald makes a friend—or two. Someone lurks in a cabin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's to the break ups that didn't break us  
> The break down, wrong turn that takes ya  
> To a little dive bar in Dahlonega  
> Hear a song from a band that saves ya, man  
> It's hittin' rock bottom smoke 'em if you got 'em  
> Nothing's going right  
> Makin' the best of the worst day kinda night  
> — Ashley McBryde, "A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega"

_It’s in the odd hours of the night that I am reminded of a certain tale I heard in my younger years, when things were ripe and tighter than they tend to be these days. I heard it in the back of a dive-bar, a small little shithole in the wall that made it on a grand total of one map during the sixties before falling off the face of the Earth before the Berlin wall did. Maybe it was a shithole, but it sure beat getting drunk alone at home with the alleycats that climbed the terrace and made my apartment their apartment. Cats won’t even extend the courtesy to buy you a drink._

_I forget how old I was, but the raven-haired bartender I remember vividly, he was a fine one. Far too fine to be working in that nowhere job anyhow. It wasn’t Hotpants himself that relayed the story to me, no, not even close. It was his brother, this short and stout man with fiery orange hair and mean brown eyes. He was the younger brother, and I’ve since deduced that Hotpants took all the hot-genes before Mean-Eyes had a chance at them to begin with. Mean-Eyes was a stubborn fuck, I’ll give him that. Usually when a lady tells you to piss off and leave her to her Crown and Coke in peace, a prick will piss off. Mean-Eyes didn’t._

_Instead the jackass got drunk as a skunk, half-falling off his barstool—right next to me! I’d had half a mind to shove him off his high wooden horse and watch him roll around on the ground as he struggled to get back up, just for the hell of it. But I’ll tell you, as soon as that piece of work opened his mouth—I wanted to get even closer._

_He didn’t start off saying much, the occasional come-on or two, but once he got going there was no shutting the guy up. He talked about everything: the news, the weather, the bitch down the hall from him that keeps stealing his mail and returning it covered in cat hair and half-way opened. I tuned him out for the most part, but that’s when he said it._

_“Changelings,” Mean-Eyes whispered with this far off look in his eyes, like a garbage man recalling that time in his life when he was the high school quarterback and he won that game that almost, almost got them to the play-offs._

_“The fuck did you just say boy?” Old Sal, that’s what everyone called him I’d been told, Old Sal the old fuck that sat at the end of the bar from noon to ten every day and every night but Sunday because Sunday’s church and you can’t have church without the pastor._

_“Changelings!” And here’s when Mean-Eyes stood up, nearly knocked his still over with himself still on it, and proclaimed like a mighty gladiator if gladiators had beer bellies. He turned to me, a wild look in his eyes as he pointed his empty whiskey glass at me. Somehow, it felt less like a threat and more like a plea. Something told me this wasn’t his first rodeo. Not in this bar, not this drunk. “Have you ever hear’d of a changeling?”_

_I swallowed the lump in my throat and followed it down with what was left in my glass. “Maybe I have.”_

_“There ain’t no maybe about this.” Mean-Eyes growled. Suddenly Hotpants didn’t seem like the visual marvel he had appeared to be before. There was something elusive about Ol’ Mean-Eyes, an animal magnetism of sorts. “We’re talkin’ about changelings. Y’know, the shifters and such.”_

_“Tell me more.” I found myself saying. I was on my third drink and fourth divorce, I needed this. Sure, I didn’t know what ‘this’ meant or was, but I wasn’t going to find it alternating between staring at the bottom of my glass and staring at Hotpants’ ass._

_And then I was enraptured, and so was Mean-Eyes, I in the absolute filth spilling from his mouth, and Mean-Eyes in his intrinsically regalling telling of these changelings he was so fascinated with._

_“They’re people, you see, ’eryday people like you and me, ya’ hear? But they change.” Mean-Eyes carried on._

_“How so?” I’d asked. Drink four. I might have another. I still wasn’t sure._

_“They_ — _They shift! Into, into animals_ — _and such.”_

_“You mean...like werewolves?”_

_“You know about werewolves?” Mean-Eyes whispered with wonder. I half wanted to see how far I could yank his chain, just to test him. I enjoy testing people. Mean-Eyes seemed like he would have been a fun subject to test. “No,” Mean-Eyes shook his head. “Of course you don’t. Those ain’t real. But Changelings? Changelings are real.”_

_“You see,” Mean-Eyes cut me off before I had a chance to open my mouth. That was fine, I was used to being cut off anyways. You don’t go through four husbands without learning to grow accustomed to your voice going unheard. “Changelings haven’t always existed, like most wonders of man_ — _changelings were_ **_made_**.”

    _And this was where Mean-Eyes’s story really got good. So it goes that centuries ago, right around the time Columbus had landed in the Americas and Spanish conquistadors were out doing what Spanish conquistadors did best, there was a tribe called the Cinai. They were the last of a very long line of tribes, war tribes, tribes that lived and breathed and died war until there was only one tribe left: the Cinai. When the Cinai became the last tribe of the Once Great Tribes, they became a very peaceful people. There was no need for war when there was no one left to fight, afterall. That being said, it sent the Cinai in a tailspin when the Spanish conquistadors got around to doing to them what they’d been doing to all around the continent._

_The Cinai, for all needs and purposes, were very nearly wiped out. It wasn’t until the high Shaman of the village took it upon himself to save his tribe that the Cinai were given a glimmer of hope. It was rumoured by their elders that once in the beginning, when the seas were still untraversed and the land was an untamed beast, their war-adoring people had developed a new kind of warfare, a warfare that transcended warriors and weapons. This new, well, as it was ancient, warfare had warriors, but these warriors were called Te’as. Te’as were considered the strongest of the strong, the best of the best, the most fit to survive what it required to become a Te’a. Te’as were renowned as spiritual warriors, warriors that with the help of a shaman harnessed the spirits of their ancestors, long passed into the immaterial world and rebirthed as their souls’ natural forms._

 _So the wise shaman of the Cinai found the strongest warriors remaining in the tribe, and with the helps of the council of priests, a new generation of Te’as were born. When the conquistadors returned, ripe with pestilence and a thirst for glory, the Te’as met them with equal vigor. The conquistadors had seen nothing like the Te’as before. In their culture, there was rumour of witchcraft_ — _but rumour was rumour and ‘savages’ changing forms right before their very eyes was another thing entirely. The conquistadors won the war, but the Cinai won the battle. Well, and this was the part where Mean-Eyes got this cynical, almost giddy smile on his face, the Te’as did. By the fall of the last conquistador that came looking to conquer the Cinai, the Cinai had long fallen, and only the Te’as stood in their place._

_There was no tribe left for the Te’as, no land to call their own, no people. So they spread across the continent, to other tribes with no hope, or land, or people, and the Te’as were lost to history. Almost._

_“You see, Te’as are just a fancy word for changelings, ya’ hear?” Mean-Eyes concluded, leaning in real close. Too close, if you asked me. “And they say changelings are all around us. Old Sal could be a changeling. I could be a changling,” He leaned in even closer, the smell of whiskey on his breath and he jabbed a meaty finger into my shoulder. I should have broken it for that. “_ ** _You_ ** _could be a changeling.”_

_“Jack, that’s enough. It’s closing time, leave the poor woman alone.” Hotpants scolded. I hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten. Even Old Sal had come and gone. Now it was just me, ol’ Mean-Eyes and Hotpants. It sounds like the start to a bad joke._

_“Hen_ — _Henry I’m not done yet, she doesn’t kn-ow about the, the changelings!” Mean-Eyes drawled drunkenly._

_“Jack, we’re going home. That’s that.” Hotpants had grumbled. Maybe Hotpants had a little bit of that animal magnetism too, with the ass to go with it. Then Hotpants looked at me with his gorgeous amber eyes that seemed to flash and me, and whispered like every man in my life thus far had completely and utterly failed to do. “I’m sorry if my brother bugged you ma’am, he’s had a bit too much to drink. Please have a safe drive home, and a pleasant rest of your evening.”_

_If you asked me to this day, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you which hurt me more, the sinking realization that after all that lovely entertainment I’d still be winding up at home, drinking alone with my cats, or knowing full well that at the ripe age of thirty-five with four ex-husbands and a studio apartment to show for all my efforts in life, I had finally reached the age where I was a ma’am. I could curl my hair like all the younger girls were doing these days, swipe those vivid colors along my cheeks and the darker ones across my eyes, but at the end of the day to every Hotpants bartender, I’d be a ma’am. Shit, at least I was probably still a ten in Mean-Eyes’, well, eyes._

_I called a cab and rode home alone that night, the words of Ol’ Mean-Eyes still echoing in my mind. Then it was home, to the cats, and the Jack Daniel’s, and as I sat that night on my old loveseat that still smelled of my long-departed aunt’s cigarette habit, I couldn’t help but be entranced by a shapely black-cat resting on the rail of the terrace. A shapely black-cat, and its flashing amber eyes._

****

    “What in the world could have done something like this?” Herakles asked aloud, tone lingering on the edges of disinterested—no, that wasn't quite right. _Inquisitive_. Yes, that was the word. He and Alfred were conversing atop the hill, out of the way of the bustling Crime Scene Investigations team swarming the small gravel-filled valley below.

    “Something hungry enough to bust through a fence.” Alfred shrugged, pulling his phone from his pocket to check the time. Right around noon. Ludwig would be arriving any minute now.

    “Jones? Are you out here?” The sheriff came lumbering from the footprint path with a less-than-pleased expression, almost as soon as Alfred had slipped his phone back into his slacks. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

    “Over here Sheriff!”

    “Jones, what’s so important you called me out here?” Ludwig’s brows drew tight. Alfred had failed to explain a thing over the phone, shock and all. What he did manage before hanging up was to demand Ludwig to march his ass to Baker’s park as fast as Ludwigly possible, which was a miracle of man on its own. Besides, the situation wasn’t something he could easily explain through word of mouth alone.

    Alfred was dead silent, pointing his chin in the direction of the small, hidden cliff overlooking the hill. He and Herakles guided the sheriff to the cliff’s edge, and Alfred witnessed the exact moment the gears in Ludwig’s head starting turning to realization.

    “CSI counted twenty-eight of them when they got here from Baxter county. Herk confirmed that’s how many of them are missing from the park.”

    “My god…” Ludwig muttered, eyes skimming over the bloody mess. Twenty-eight, that’s how many gazelle were laying slaughtered in the valley. Their eyes were glazed over, blood soaking their glossy coats, bite marks around their necks and throats.

    “This wasn’t hunting. At least, not for survival.” Herakles noted, crouching and tossing a pebble down the ragged hillside into the mass grave. “Whatever animal did this, it was doing it for sport.”

    “It was blood thirsty.” Alfred concluded, eying Herakles as he rose gracefully to his feet. There was no heavy stench of rotting flesh like in the movies, just a hanging musk cloud of death. The gazelle were fresh kills, but just old enough for the blood to soak into the gravel. If he had to guess, they were all killed the night before. The same night Elizaveta’s cousin and her boyfriend were murdered.

    “I need to go back and tell Kiku about this. We’re the only rangers on duty today. The fence need to be patched immediately.” Herakles grunted, fondling the walkie-talkie on his belt absentmindedly. For a man that knew nothing of the paranormal workings of the world like Alfred and Ludwig did, his face didn’t portray the inner thoughts and worries Alfred would expect to be gnawing at the man.

    “Thanks for all your help Herk. Go back to your gardening.” Alfred clapped him on the shoulder, grinning at the half-scalding glare he received in return.

    “Landscaping.” Herakles muttered on his breath, beginning the trek through the woods back to the mule he had drove down there before the Great-Gazelle-Revelation. Alfred looked back at the endless expanse of spruce and pine and decided, with the exception of the dead gazelle pit, that the forest no longer resembled the horror movie scene it once had. Now, blistering afternoon sun filtered through the tree and lime leaves to illuminate the forest floor like a disco ball. He was grateful for the cool, shady coverage the towering trees provided.

    “This is sick and glutinous.” Ludwig spat. His hands twitched with the impulse to clench them, ball up his fists and sock whoever was responsible for the slaughter in the eye. “My pack has hunted before, I’m sure yours has on occasion too. You know as well as I do that _nothing_ is wasted in a hunt.”

    “The bastard that did this, didn’t get the memo.”

    “I want to know every registered vampire in the area, can you get Tino on that?”

    “Yeah, I’ll call him up,” Alfred murmured, distracted. He couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes from the gazelle. It was like a bad car wreck, he couldn’t look away. Yet, something bugged him in the back of his head, and just as a mosquito pesters a hiker, a thought in the back of his mind wouldn’t leave him be. “Hey Lud?”

    Ludwig’s attention snapped up from his phone, mid-way through texting Roderich to see how Elizaveta was holding up. As much as there was no love lost between him and Roderich, he was still Elizaveta’s husband, and that meant he was the most straightforward way to get a response on the woman’s emotional state.

    “I’ve been thinking—don’t give me that look. I have pretty good ideas sometimes.” Alfred frowned.

    “Ah, sometimes. The operative word.”

    “You’ve had a hard day, so I’m going to let you get away with that one. Anyways—I _know_ we’ve been looking at a fanger being our suspect, but...did you see those prints on the path over there?”

    The sheriff appeared pensive as he nodded. “I can see where this is going Jones, and I’ve got to say it is not entirely far-fetched.”

    “A form changer. Now, I’m not going to say it’s a werewolf, because it could be a shifter.” Alfred threw his hands in the air. “I’m not above ruling out my own species, but I didn’t smell shifter scent on those prints.”

    “You don’t have to explain yourself Jones,” Ludwig grunted with a sigh. “Those are were-tracks. If they were shifter tracks, they would be smaller. And the scent is extremely criminalizing, I can’t get a good gauge on it, and shifter smell is strong, I would know it anywhere. This wasn’t a shifter, and I’m beginning to fear that it isn’t a vampire either. It’s a were, I know it. You are right.”

    Alfred blinked. “What.”

    “What? It’s true—shifters tend to smell a little muskier than w—”

    “No, no. Not that.” Alfred grinned, pulling his phone out and tapping on the screen. “Can you just repeat that last bit there? I’ve been looking for a new ringtone and—alright, I’m sensing by that frown that that’s not happening. Worth a shot.”

    Ludwig rolled his eyes mid-scowl and sighed, “It’s a werewolf that did this, I don’t have a doubt. What’s worrying me is the lack of packless weres in town.”

    “You don’t think—”

    “A new pack.”

    “No fucking way,” Alfred scoffed, neglecting to excuse his foul language in front of his commanding officer. “Is that how it works with weres? You can just pop up and move anywhere?”

    “No, with a pack comes territory. My pack has the woods bordering town _covered_ with our scent, this is a new pack looking for territory in the wrong place.”

    “Oh shit. Is this going to turn into some kind of werewolf territory war like in the movies?”

    “ _What?_ No!” Ludwig almost smiled, a little quirk of the lips away from it. Alfred’s naivety was honestly one of the funniest parts of his day. “If this was a hundred years ago, then _maybe,_ but this is the twenty-first century Alfred. Werewolves are past the days of territory wars.”

    “So...a disagreement then? How do you even settle something like that? Finders keepers?”

    “Hopefully, we assert our claim to the territory and they leave—assuming this _is_ a pack we’re dealing with and not a ‘lone-wolf’ so to speak, which it likely may be, there isn’t much scent to go off here. Especially with your scent lingering in the area.”

    “Sounds like an ordeal to me.”

    “We can’t all by wandering shifters, Jones. Packs and territories are the way my kind has worked for centuries. Technically, your brood would have been executed by my pack if we were to follow all the ancient rules.”

    “I’m just saying, there’s gotta be some were-code to these kind of things.” Alfred shrugged, lips twisting wryly. “Hey, maybe if you pissed on a bunch of trees the assholes that did this will get the picture?”

    “Your suggestion is helpful, albeit crude, but a pack’s scent is more than enough to establish a territory claim.” Ludwig wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, aching bones longing for a hard day’s end and cooler weather. He would take a brisk Texas autumn over the hundred-degree heat any day. “But, I think you’re on to something.”

    “Wait, are you seriously going to tag a bunch of trees? Gross man.”

    “ _Jones_.” Ludwig sighed long and hard, muttering under his breath for a higher power to just go ahead and put him out of his misery. “I mean the ‘were-code’ as you put it.”

    “Oh. I still think peeing everywhere would send a pretty strong message.”

    The sheriff shook his head, ignoring his deputy’s unhelpful solutions. He spoke, “I haven’t been a pack leader very long. I do not know much about werewolf law, but I think I know someone who might.”

    “You mean the old man, right?”

“Yes, _the_ old man.” Ludwig nodded, tipping his head in Alfred’s direction. “I still want a list of every registered vampire nearby, and I would appreciate it if you wrote up the report for this...mess.”

“Gotcha boss.” Alfred gave him a two-fingered salute, ever the boy scout.

“Thank you, Alfred.” The sheriff let his shoulders relax, turning back to the footprint path. He paused mid-stride, looking back over his shoulder at his deputy. “Oh, and Jones?”

Alfred perked up like a canine at command, eyes alert. “Hm?”

“You did good today. Be proud of yourself.”

The younger man grinned ear to ear as the sheriff continued on his way back to the truck he arrived in. Alfred cupped his hands around his mouth like a makeshift megaphone and hollered, “Does this mean I’m still on call?”

Despite hearing him loud and clear, Ludwig chuckled to himself and let his silence answer the deputy’s question for him. The day wasn’t over yet, but as the sun climbed higher into the sky, he could feel the weight on his shoulders for the day slowly getting lighter and lighter.

****

It wasn’t long before the tires of Ludwig’s truck, emblazoned with the word ‘Sheriff’ on all sides, rolled into the parking lot of a decently crowded restaurant. Above the entrance, a partially nude cherub greeted him.

Angelo’s Parke wasn’t the most refined restaurant in all of Texas, but as far as family-owned restaurants went, it was a nice place for a business lunch or a dinner date. Ludwig himself had personally taken a date or two to experience Angelo’s traditional Italian cuisine, back in high school when he fancied taking girls on exuberant dinner dates, and fancied girls period. Nowadays, he didn’t have time for dinners and nights out, but he wasn’t at Angelo’s to reminisce on a less-busy time in his life.

“Table for one, Sheriff Beilschmidt?” Christos clicked a pen behind the host stand as Ludwig walked in. Christos Alexopoulos was an average character, in fact, Ludwig only knew him as one of the waiters at Angelo’s, and for his peculiar haircut Peculiar, as in, horribly shaggy, and looking like the hem of a t-shirt a teenage girl had turned into a crop top on a whim. Regardless, Ludwig greeted him with a friendly half-smile.

“No, thank you. I’m actually here to see Romulus.”

“Oh? The big-guy himself? Boss is around here somewhere, but you’ll have to ask Lovino where he’s at.”

“What the hell are you doing here potato-man, I thought cops liked donuts—not pasta.” Lovino snarled drily, tossing a small stack of menus onto their proper, larger pile. The Italian man was dressed in a pair of dark pants and a nice white shirt, hair neatly combed, the spitting image of rocking a waiter job like he wasn’t having just about the shittiest work day in his entire waiting career.

“I’m not here to eat, I’m looking for your grandfather. Do you know where I can find him?” Ludwig asked lightly. It was no secret to anyone in town that Lovino Vargas and the sheriff were a nemesis-match made in heaven. The Italian man never cared for Ludwig, and every bit of bitterness that he didn’t expose the rest of Mason Falls’ citizens to, was saved especially for Ludwig himself. Ludwig didn’t dare to imagine what kind of wrath he’d face at the hands of Lovino if he only knew.

“Good to know the town’s _finest_ spends his time looking for buddies rather than doing, I don’t know, his _job_.” Lovino twisted around Christos to rearrange the seating chart on a monitor while Christos excused himself to any other corner of the restaurant that put him far away from Lovino’s loose tongue.

Ludwig was wrong, his day wasn’t getting shorter, just his life span. At this rate, he would be doomed to die of stress-related illness before he saw his forties. “It’s _very_ important that I see Romulus.”

Lovino stopped everything he was doing, both hands gripping either side of the host stand, giving Ludwig an even look with his fierce hazel eyes. “How many waiters do you see here Potatoman? If you count me, Christos, and that fucker Feliks who’s always on break fixing his fucking hair, you have three waiters to seat and serve every hungry asshole that walks in here. You know what that means?”

“ _Lovino_ , I really just need to—”

“It means I’m mega-fucked here, I’m getting bent over by these fuckers that keep calling in because their drunk asses got piss-wasted and now they can’t woman the fuck up and wait tables with a hangover.” Lovino threw his hands in the air, “I’m too damn busy to help you slack off!”

“Can you just tell me where I can find your grandfather?” Ludwig begged exasperatedly.

The Italian man looked him in the eyes and sighed. He opened his mouth to respond and immediately closed it as the bell above the door chimed. Ludwig watched a fury ignite in Lovino’s eyes like a wildfire as the man’s head started shaking left and right sporadically. “No, no fucking way—”

“Lovino!” Antonio greeted cheerily, his youngest brother in tow. Antonio’s sunshine-y smile was a friendly sight to Ludwig’s exhausted eyes. Antonio was a good friend of Ludwig’s, and the Hispanic man had been one of his older brother Gilbert’s best friends. The only downside to Antonio’s glowing presence was the man was possibly the only person on the face of the planet that Lovino scorned more than Ludwig.

“No way bastard, not today. You march your dumb ass out those doors right fucking _now_. I have too many tables to wait as it is to add you fuckers to the list of dipshits I have to deal with today.” Lovino swung his arm with the force of a backswing, pointing dead at the entrance doors.

“Aww Lovino, but Carlos drove us all the way here for lunch.” Antonio appealed, curls wild as he grinned. Antonio was Lovino’s opposite in wardrobe, a sweaty white t-shirt and ripped blue jeans tucked into his dirty work boots. Next to him, his brother wore a similar dress, just as tall as his older brother, but stoic as a mountain face.

“Fine, but your ass is seating yourselves. I’ll get your fucking orders in a minute.” Lovino snapped, and for every bit of toxin in his glare, Antonio beamed back a sunny grin. Ludwig didn’t know Antonio as personally as he maybe should for how often he sees the man and his brothers, but he knew him well enough to know that his chipper demeanor was a constant, and foremost, a blessing. “And _you_ , Potatoman, if you need to talk to Nonno so bad, the old fart is probably in his office. If that’s all you wanted, I have some ungrateful fuckers to serve.”

Lovino shoved past Ludwig with two menus tucked underneath his arm as he rounded the free-standing wall that separated the front of the restaurant from the dining area. For only three of eleven waiters on the clock, Lovino and Christos were managing to stay ahead of the lunch rush surprisingly well—with or without Feliks, who was probably still ate home nursing the aftermath of his latest high. Truth be told, Lovino was never in a good mood, and small things like hungover co-workers were enough to send him toppling into a rotten mindset like nothing.

“Alright fuckers,” Lovino slapped the two menus haphazardly down onto the nearest two-person table. From the pocket of the mini-apron tied around his waist, he retrieved a small notepad and pen. “What do you shitheads want?”

“Ah, just the usual Lovi. You know what I like.” Antonio hummed, looking to Carlos and grinning his kilowatt smile. “I’ve got lunch.”

“Just a water.” Carlos grunted, brushing his sweaty, raven hair back with his fingers.

“What? Don’t be like that, you got lunch last time! It’s my turn to pay.”

“It’s not the money,” Carlos frowned. “I’m just not hungry.”

“How are you not hungry? You didn’t eat breakfast this morning either!”

“I’m just not in the mood. That crap Maximo cooked for dinner turned my stomach. Just a water is _fine_.”

The older man shook his head, turning to Lovino with both menus in hand. “He will have what I’m getting, on me.”

“Anything else I can get you two pains in my ass?” Lovino scribbled down two orders on his notepad in his scrawling cursive script, and when Antonio shook his head in response, he waltzed away and slipped the ticket into the kitchen window. Usually, he would yell the order in to the cook, but ever since his younger brother Romeo had taken a second job in construction to save up for his own place to live, this strange man Lovino hadn’t bothered learning the name of had been working in the kitchen. He was all for his baby brother moving out of his grandfather’s house, but if you asked Lovino, Romeo was a better cook. Now the only thing Romeo made in the kitchen was the dirty dishes clean.

On the topic of brothers, Lovino swung back around to Antonio’s table while he cleared a booth next to it. He scowled, “Where’s the other asshole today?”

Antonio looked up from his phone with a laugh, sharing a look with Carlos. “Max got ticketed by a deputy. He had his truck parked in the wrong spot, and now he’s waiting for the officer to swing back around.”

“He thinks he’s smooth enough to talk himself out of a ticket.” Carlos contributed, amused.

Lovino rolled his eyes, turning back to the table, and task, at hand. Out of the corner of his vision, he eyed the small hallway next to the kitchen where Sheriff Beilschmidt disappeared, and shook off the cold, sour rock in his gut.

****

This wasn’t entirely how Ludwig intended to spend his afternoon, but he supposed it could be worse. There he sat in a wooden chair dragged up in front of Romulus’s tiny desk, an almost pathetically small excuse for furniture that seemed so out of place for a man like Romulus, larger than life. It was comical, really. The cushioning in the chair was old, as was the chair, and he shifting, trying to find an angle where he didn’t sink into the seat. He remembered a story Feliciano told him about his twin Lovino, bitter, bitter Lovino. The story went that when Lovino and Feliciano were growing up, their grandfather would make cooked spinach because Feliciano loved watching Popeye the Sailor Man. But Lovino, Lovino _hated_ spinach. He hated it so much that one night, he found a rip in the cushions of one of the old dining chairs his grandpa had, and he stuffed his portion of spinach in the rip. Awful for the cushion, great for Lovino, who got excused from the table without suffering through eating the terrible spinach. Ludwig could imagine how the story ended, with a ruined chair—and for Lovino—more spinach. Thinking of the old story left Ludwig more uncomfortable than humored.

He felt like somehow, someway, even though his visit to Angelo’s had nothing to do with it, his secret had been found out. He felt like the restaurant itself had peered into his soul and knew, _knew_ he was dating Feliciano without Romulus’s knowledge—without anyone’s knowledge, really. The walls of the cluttered office seemed to get closer and closer, like they were trying to suffocate him. The faces on the framed portraits and the newspaper clippings judged him, ink eyes boring into him.

He stood abruptly, pacing around the small office. He couldn’t just sit and wait for Romulus to get back from the restroom, he had to occupy himself—before he went completely crazy. He paced in circles before rooting himself in front of the newspaper cut-out push-pinned to the wall, curled up from the air-conditioning current. It was an old print, text faded with age. On the front a young man in boxing gloves raised his arms high in victory on the ropes of a ring.

The office door swung open before he could try and decipher the mangled lettering. An older man crossed the doorway, unkempt curls like dark wine pointing in every direction. His skin was a familiar tan, like the sun made love to it, and Ludwig was a certain shade of ashamed to admit that for a man in his late sixties, Romulus Vargas was still incredibly handsome. His intrusion was noticed no sooner than when Romulus crossed over the door threshold. A wide smile grew on the older man’s face, “Ludwig! My friend, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I—yes, I don’t mean to intrude. It was imperative that I have a word with you.” Ludwig stumbled over his words, eyes darting away from the news clipping. The judgmental ink eyes were back to boring into him.

“Of course my friend, it’s no trouble—come, take a seat.” Romulus shuffled around packed bookshelves and crumbled receipts littering the floor to his desk pushed in front of the small window feeding sunlight into the room. Sitting in his large, leather wheeled-chair, Romulus gestured to the sparsely cushioned seat Ludwig had previously been occupying for the better part of the past ten minutes.

He took the offered chair quietly, ignoring the assault of spinach thoughts as he sunk back into the parchment-colored fabric. He bowed his head in thanks.

“What brings you by?” Romulus’s eyes crinkled at the corners, wrinkles plastering his face from a lifetime of smiling and laughter.

“I’m working a case and—well—something...troubling came up, that I felt I needed to discuss with you.”

“Oh a case? How has work been treating you, good I hope?”

“Busy. Very busy, which I suppose would be a good thing in any other line of work.”

“Elizaveta! I just remembered—you just reminded me, Elizaveta, Elizaveta—oh! How is Elizaveta doing? Roderich called in today, he said she wasn’t feeling well.”

“About that...her cousin passed on, it’s part of the case I’m working. That’s why I felt it important to—”

“Oh _Elizaveta_ , poor girl. I can’t imagine, losing someone so suddenly—does not help that Roderich can’t hold down a job. Did you know this is the second time this _week_ he’s called in? And it’s only been a month since he started!”

Ludwig’s mouth formed in a straight line as he held his tongue. He loved the Vargases, he truly did, albeit some more than others, but _god_ , did they have an awful habit of changing topics. Notorious topic changers, _and_ they never _stopped_ **_talking_**. “I am sure Roderich has his reasons. I do not know him well enough to be certain, but that’s Eliza’s business.”

“Reasons my ass, he’d holding on to that music dream of his.” Romulus spat, standing from his chair and crossing the office to the opposite wall. He pointed to one of the posted newspaper clippings, the same one that had grappled Ludwig’s attention. “He has a young child, a _wife_ to care for. His mind should be on taking care of his family instead of a piano! Dreams are second, only to _family_.”

“I agree, his work ethic could be better, but he _is_ who Elizaveta has chosen to be with. I have grown to tolerate him.”

“Not everyone can be such good men like you, Ludwig. I’m only grateful my boys are.” Romulus sighed airly, returning to his chair to lean back. “I am a lucky man for my grandsons, I love them to death. But I will tell you, they are _killing_ me. You know—I think Feli is seeing someone. Man, woman, I don’t know, but _something_ has him glowing, I tell you.”

If Ludwig has been eating something, he probably would have choked on it. The lack of food still didn’t stop him from coughing on a lungful of air. He couldn’t decide whether or not it would be merciful for a higher power to smite him then and there.

“He must be banging _someone._ I swear to _god_.” Romulus pointed his eyes and a large, calloused finger to the ceiling. “He was _skipping_ yesterday, and a Vargas man does not skip unless he _scored_.”

Ludwig decided yes. Yes, it would be merciful to put him out of his long-suffering misery, swiftly.

“More power to him, lord knows his brother Lovino _needs_ to get laid before the boy puts me in a coffin. He doesn’t live! It’s work, work, work—all the time. No time for pretty ladies or just a good drink at a bar. He likes like an old man, and I _am_ an old man!”

Ludwig grimaced, opening his mouth to get a word in. He was trampled over, mercilessly.

“At least he’s working and moved out, that _alone_ is a blessing. Let me tell you, the youngest one—Romeo—I love him, but _jesus christ_. He needs to move the fuck out already. Pardon my language, Ludwig, but that boy, god help him. There is an age when a young man simply _shouldn’t_ be living with his _grandpa_.”

Ludwig nodded along slowly as Romulus groaned, relaxing back into his leather chair. Now, more than ever, did the older man look like the world-wearied man he was supposed to be.

“Ahh, forgive me.” He apologized, leaning forward against his desk. “I rambled at you, and you came here to discuss—not listen to an old man bitch. My attention is all yours Ludwig.”

Ludwig smiled weakly, “It’s not exactly about the case I’ve been working, but I had one of my deputies investigate animal attacks in the woods and...we think there might be a lone wolf, or a pack, responsible.”

“Have you ruled out vampires?”

“Well, no—but my deputy found were-tracks in the park woods, and,” Ludwig cleared his throat. Just thinking about the grisly slaughter pit from the woods send shivers down his spine. “dead gazelle. About thirty of them.”

The Italian man frowned. “And you are sure it wasn’t someone in the pack?”

“You know the tradition. If we hunt, we hunt as a pack, and nothing is wasted. This was killing for the sake of killing.”

“I see why you were so concerned, to seek my input, but if you truly do have a rivaling pack on your hands, I’m afraid I won’t be much help. Territory disputes were never something I had to handle as a pack leader.”

“Is there anything I’m supposed to do to...assert our claim?”

Romulus shook his head thoroughly, “No, no. I have heard of these situations before, and the best thing to do is act like nothing is wrong, don’t escalate things where there may only be a... _misunderstanding_ , if you get what I’m saying.”

“So...do nothing?” Ludwig’s brows drew tight.

“Not nothing, just be smart. You do not have all the facts yet, yes? So, all I say to do is inform the pack and stay _alert_ , stay vigilant. Back in the day, if a war were to break out, it was a bloody dispute. Thankfully, we live in different times now. I am just saying to stick together and watch for anything you _know_ is wrong.”

“How do I tell myself that I’m not taking a serious threat too lightly?”

“Ludwig, you are young. But, there is a difference between young and stupid. You know what a threat from another pack looks like. Dead deer? Not a threat to you, a threat to the deer. You are a good leader young man, a smart leader, and I trust you with my grandsons. You should trust yourself, too.”

Leave it to Romulus to be the lighthearted voice of reason in the middle of a shit parade. Like a slot-machine spewed coins, Romulus spit wisdom, and Ludwig happened to hit the jackpot. The man stared at his shoes in thought, grinning weakly. “Gilbert made this look a lot easier. He would know what to do right away, and he’d have stuck with it.”

Romulus, larger than life Romulus, who towered over many, and cared deeply for more, stood. He laid an arm to rest on Ludwig’s broad shoulders, just as he would have if Ludwig was one of his own grandsons, his flesh and blood. His booming voice was soft and damp with emotion. “Your brother was a good man, he would be proud to see the even better man you have made yourself into, and the amazing pack leader you have become.”

Ludwig smiled gently, “I do not suppose you’ve been itching to be pack head again, eh?”

There, there was the booming, raucous laughter of a man whose spirit burned like the blazing sun. “I would love to take the reins, my boy, but I’m too old for leading a pack. I have grandsons to look after, and _god_ , no matter how old they get, they still need me around, and as long as I’m needed around here, here I will be.”

Ludwig got to his feet, forgetting about the inky, judging eyes. He wrung his hands together, he didn’t know what to do with them, he was genuinely considering investing in a hat to always carry and never wear, just to occupy them. “I will call for an emergency meeting tonight. You may come, if you’d like?”

The older man guided him warmly to the office door, clicking his tongue as he big Ludwig goodbye. “Not a chance. I am an old man, I can’t keep up with you young people anymore. If the sun it setting, it’s _already_ past my bedtime.”

****

All things considered, Madeline’s day was off to a peaceful start—er— _middle_. The morning could have been better, Mike could have just _not_ broken the Keurig, but she was satisfied with the results. As the morning winded up to the afternoon, she stood outside the Ford, leaning against the sun-warmed metal, and finishing off the lesser part of her coffee.

Her job for the time being was, thankfully, an easy one. Observe. Wait. Investigate. Report. Done. It sounded simple when Ludwig told her the assignment, and it was proving to be blessedly relaxing. She was situated in the Apollo’s Garden neighborhood, one of the newer developments in town, looking into a string of burglaries—in _daylight_. Honestly, she was expecting her job would be done before her shift was over, so long as the party responsible for the robberies didn’t spontaneously pick a new target of houses.

Madeline downed the last dredges of her sweet drink, more maple syrup that had sunk to the bottom than coffee, and brought the brim of her hat down lower to shield her pale face from the burning sun. Her hat was light tan, and stiff. Alfred had one just like it—a deputy’s hat. It was certainly a fashion statement, but Madeline had never been much of a fashionista and if wearing the funny-looking hat meant she wouldn’t come home as red as a lobster, then so be it. On the brightside, her pinned-up mess of hair was out of sight.

She took in a deep breath of air, the cent of late Summer and freshly-mowed grass. It had been a long time since she was just outdoors, just has the opportunity to stop and watch the world go around. It was calming, staring after a dog chasing his own tail, two little girls playing hopscotch across the street, a woman tending to her garden. It soothed a stressed ache in her that she didn’t know she had.

She was hardly a complete shut-in. She got out, she socialized, it wasn’t her fault that the only place to hang out in town was either _out of town_ , or Kirkland’s, where she saw the same people, and did the same things. Okay, maybe she did virtually have the social life of an old woman, but she wasn’t at blame for that. She had a full-time job, and it’s not easy being a sheriff’s deputy when you’re well-acquainted with most of the perpetrators. In a small town, it’s hard not to end up arresting someone you know. And, where being a deputy wasn’t as time-consuming as a full-time job was, being and older sister _was_. Hell, being a sister, period. Alfred could act like a toddler sometimes. Finally, it was just nice to stand back and watch life do its thing.

For a brief moment, when her attention was invested in a suspicious cable van, she thought some thin clouds had blown in to block the harsh sun. A cable van so late on a Friday, parking in a still-developing neighborhood, was odd to her. No one was home, no car or truck parked alongside the curb, no one around to let a cable crew in. Observe, check. Wait, check. Now, to investigate. Madeline made a move to get a closer look at the odd cable-van, and smacked dead into a man. Evidently, the sky was still cloudless, and what she had mistaken for clouds blocking the sun, had in fact been a shadow. A very, very big shadow belonging to a very, very large man.

She opened her mouth to apologize. His voice was faster. His loud, very angry voice. “This ticket is _bullshit_. My park was parked for a _minute_. I was talking to my fucking brother!”

Madeline sucked in an air of breath. God help her, she was lost. What happened to her peaceful afternoon? Where did her _relaxation_ go? Where did this tall, angry giant of a man come from? Why, of all people in the world, did he choose to start yelling at _her_ ? She wasn’t a tall woman by any means, and it didn’t take much to make her feel tiny, but she was sure the man raising his voice at her was large enough to make _Alfred_ feel closer to a mouse than a man, and Alfred was built like a quarterback. She could handle this, this inexplicably angry man, the important thing was not to panic. She knew how to handle this, all she had to do was go about this like an assignment. First, observe.

She had already decided the man was a practical giant, a very cross-looking giant. His hair was ridiculously curly, long and pulled back in a ponytail. His appearance was, in every way, gruff. He was badly in need of a shave, scruff along his wide jawline. His eyes were dark, angry dark. She was observant, but she needed to draw more conclusions before she could deem it safe to proceed to step two. His clothes were dirty, caked in dust, all except for his yellow-orange vest, reflecting the sunlight. A construction worker then, probably working on the part of the neighborhood that was still unfinished. It clicked. Madeline _knew_ this angry giant. He worked at the Stop ‘n’ Shop.

Second, wait. She bit her tongue and waited for his angry rant to slow down, give her a chance to intervene.

“I know you,” AngryGiant™ spat. “You’re the asshole cop that screeches your tires and buys that shitty beer!”

“Actually—”

“I’m not paying this stupid fine! My truck was still running, it wasn’t _parked_.”

Forget waiting, his rant was endless, and she still needed to get a look at that cable van while she had a chance. She cleared her throat, raising her mousy voice. “I’m sorry, but you must have the wrong officer, sir.”

AngryGiant™ scowled, squinting down at her. The truck was the wrong color, sure, but the uniform was the same—even the hat matched. He shook his head, “I know it was you! I saw you leave the ticket on my truck, ass.”

“You should really watch the way you talk to an officer—and really, I haven’t ticketed anyone all day! You have the wrong cop.” Investigate. He wasn’t appeased, she could tell by the look in his eyes. In his burly hands she spied a little yellow slip of paper sticking out from his balled-up fist. The citation. She moved forward and snatched it from his burly hand, unravelling it to confirm her suspicions. Alfred. She could kill him for making her deal with this, she really could.

Madeline girt her teeth, holding the citation out for AngryGiant™ to see for himself. “You were ticketed by Deputy Jones.” She traced her last name on her shirt. “I’m Officer _Williams_.”

He narrowed his eyes, unsure whether to trust the citation or his own misplaced anger, hand flying to the side of his head and staying there for a moment. He must have settled somewhere between the two, because eventually he huffed and snatched the citation back from her. “My bad, you looked like someone else.”

Ah yes, the icing on the shit cake that was _that_ conversation—confused for her brother. He tall, very much a man, very much not her, brother. Sure, they were siblings, but for crying out loud!. She seriously was going to murder Alfred for ruining her peaceful day. Her shoulders fell, voice hushed. “It’s fine, it happens a lot.”

“This ticket still isn’t right—I wasn’t parked!”

She was tied between diffusing AngryGiant™’s frustration and completely ignoring him because around the corner she could see the cable van’s lights turn on and prepare to leave its parking spot. She took off around the corner, but not before yelling back over her shoulder, “If you want to appeal a ticket, take it up with _traffic court_!”

She skidded around the corner in time for the cable van to begin cruising down the road. Madeline fumbled for her phone, swiping frantically to bring up the camera, but by the time she had it up and poised to snap a picture, the van was gone.

“Son of a _bitch_.” She swore, hands shaking with the urge to throw her phone down in frustration. Ultimately, she threw her had down to the burning sidewalk, and settled for holding her head in her hands as she sat on the red-painted curb. She could feel a migraine coming on. She stayed there longer than she intended to, long enough for AngryGiant™ to decide he was wasting his time waiting at her truck to talk about his ticket, and left. There on the curb she sat, a headache developing, and sans a single meaningful lead. She hoped the day ended faster than she felt like it was going to.

****

Arthur was having a ball of a day, a seeming trend among the inhabitants of Mason Falls on that particular Friday. Instead of starting his day off with a nice cup of tea like god intended mornings to begin with, he woke up to Allistor in the middle of having an episode. He supposed he was asking for it, Arthur _was_ the one that agreed to living with and working with Allistor, through thick and thin. That didn’t mean there weren’t some mornings Arthur wished he living in a completely different hemisphere, probably in the UK somewhere far from any semblance of rednecks and small-town life. He loved Allistor, he really did, but Arthur was never good at handling his older brother’s episodes. Nonetheless, between Arthur and little Penelope, Arthur was more often than not the party in charge of helping Allistor through is troubles. Which, he supposed, couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t expect Penelope to try and soothe Allistor, who was three times her size and a grown ass man, not when she was morning the last few days of her Summer break.

It had taken patience, breakfast, and about nine hours of crossword puzzles, but Arthur finally managed to work Allistor into a state of mind where he was comfortable being left alone. A victory, on Arthur’s part, and it would have been an even more substantial victory had it not been around five in the afternoon that Arthur walking into his bar and grill to find it in complete chaos. The universe had picked that particular Friday to shit on someone’s day, and apparently Arthur had drew the short straw.

“Arthur! Oh, I’m so glad you’re here—everything’s a _huge_ mess.” Emma, sweet Emma, explained as she passed him to deliver drinks to a table that, on any other day, wasn’t her job to serve.

“Where’s Elizaveta?” Arthur called, making his way through the partially seated table to the bar. Honestly, he needed a drink more than any of the patrons seated, and his night was only beginning.

“We tried to get ahold of you, but no one’s calls went through.” Emma swung around the large wooden bar and poured mason jars of sweet tea for a dining couple in the far corner. Her section wasn’t even close to that corner, but they were down a waitress, and she was the only one on the clock. “Eliza went home, she had a family emergency. The poor thing left in tears.”

Arthur rolled up his sleeves, literally. If he was correct in his presumption, the Mogens siblings had been keeping business afloat all day. With Allistor out and Elizaveta god-knows-where, he would need to call in another server and a cook, or else him and the Mogens would be all be working triple duty. “Has anyone called in Samuel and Feliks?”

Emma frowned, delivering the two teas. “It’s neither of their shifts, not until eight.”

“Well too bad for them, because we need them in _now_. I’ll pay them overtime, just get them in here.”

Emma nodded, disappearing behind the half-wall meant for servers to store silverware and drink pitchers. Arthur turned back to the bar, satisfied to hear Emma dialing one of the numbers posted on the half-wall. He stared down the spare mini-aprons stored under the bar like they were a snake ready to bite him. It had been a long, long time since Arthur had player wait-staff, and he wasn’t looking forward to the blast from the past. He moved sluggishly to grab it, and caught the snake’s head, before it had the chance to sink its fangs into his soft, pink flesh. He tied the smock around his waist and prepared himself. At least, he thought, he wouldn’t been a nametag for his temporary occupation. His name was already all over the bar.

****

The abrupt flashback to his waiter days was an unwelcome on as the house hand dragged closer and closer to six. He was so close to drowning his miseries in a bottle of whiskey, and it wasn’t even dinner yet. For the time being, business was calming down. He and the Mogens worked their asses off, and as the current Kirkland’s patrons chowed down, Arthur had time to lean against the bar counter and simply _be_.

He could have cursed to the heavens when the doors swung open and in walked another party that would have to be seated, have their orders taken, meals cooked, and served. Just the same, he could have praised the heavens when the party turned out to be Tino, Lovise and Emy Bondevik close behind him. Praise God, or Jesus, or whatever saint was watching over the ass of one Arthur Kirkland. He didn’t care who he was praising, but more power to them.

“Oh wow Arthur, business is booming.” Tino commended, marveling at the partially full restaurant, the decor on the walls. Everytime he walked into Kirkland’s it felt like the first time, as if he were seeing it with fresh eyes upon every visit.

“You could say that.” Arthur grumbled, wiping out glasses behind the bar. It wouldn’t be long before the barflies started trickling in with the dinner crowd. Hopefully, by then, his spare chef and bartender would show up.

“Busy...busy is good.” Lovise noted in her matter-of-fact tone. How Arthur appreciated Lovise’s intellectual company on most days, but today was _not_ one of those days.

“Put on an apron and let’s see if your opinion doesn’t change.

Lovise pulled a face, never one for having her opinions challenged. Stuck in her ways that young woman was. Lovise was a woman of little change in all ways, from head to toe. She always wore her long hair tucked behind her ear, since she was in elementary school, and Arthur had always chalked it up to the fair blonde woman’s stubbornness to change.

“Pick any table you want,” Arthur remarked, with a smile acknowledge Lovise’s younger sister—young Emy—a quiet girl, like her sister but with less of a sharp tongue. Similar accents though, twin lilting brogues from Northern Europe. “I’ll take your drink orders now.”

Lovise and Emy shared a moment of eye contact, deep lapis staring into pools of lavender. It was creepy as fuck when they did that, and unfortunately, when Lovise’s younger sister happened to be in town, Arthur was a regular witness to the ‘sibling-connection’ they shared. Lovise broke the contact, and Arthur swore to god they did that freaky-deaky sibling shit just to give people the heebie jeebies. They probably had some secret language nobody else knew about. Lovise relayed, “Sprites, for both of us.”

Arthur nodded and watched Lovise gently lead Emy away to sit down at a booth in front of one of the blinded windows. Tino’s gaze had also followed the set of siblings, practically attached at the hip, and he sighed contentedly. “Since we picked Emy up from the airport in Austin yesterday, they’ve been inseparable. It warms my heart.”

“You’re an only child Tino, you don’t understand the huge pain siblings are, even the grown adult ones.” Arthur chastised. A few of the drinks at the tables in his temporary section were starting to get low, and he wouldn’t have much longer on his ‘break.’

“I think a younger sibling like Emy would be great, I would be the best big brother.” Tino hummed. He had done his laundry, or at least some of it, donning a pale-blue long-sleeve rather than his second favorite Christmas sweater. “Oh! Speaking of siblings, how are yours?”

One grumpy patron across from the bar was sending Arthur hinting looks, eyes darting from the bar owner to the displeased patron’s drink. Tino was still talking, not a man to let a conversation lull, even when he was the only one talking. “Tino, your company is a blessing, but I’m working my ass off here and I’m down two workers. _What do you want to drink?_ ”

The sheriff office secretary laughed lightheartedly, “Sorry Arthur, I guess my tongue gets carried away sometimes. Do you have that beer—the one I got last time? That was a good beer, I tried to find it at the grocer, but I think I’ll have to check for it out of town.”

Arthur snorted softly, filling a mug to the brim with the frosty beer of Tino’s choice. Arthur knew which beer Tino wanted, he was the one that suggested it when Tino couldn’t decide on a mug or double-fisting vodka shots. In the end, Arthur had set Tino up with the only beer Arthur thought was half-decent to sober taste buds, and he knew it would be many mugs before Tino was blitzered enough not to care about what his drink tasted like. Tino was a short and stout man, but _damn_ could he hold his liquor. He slid the mug to Tino and excused himself to refill drinks, starting with the patron giving him that dirty look. If only _he_ hadn’t been the one to make the no-spitting-in-asshole’s-drinks-rule.

Arthur’s eyes were glued to one of the large windows at the rattling sound of an old engine. He watched a beaten-up motorcycle pull into one of the unoccupied employee parking spaces right up against the front side of the restaurant. His ass was in need of a metaphorical rescue, and his savior just arrived.

Samuel walked in, helmet held against his side and blonde locks sweaty and sticking up from being banished to the confines of the motorcycle helmet. He stuck a sun-tanned hand into a leather jacket pocket. “Ya’ know Artie, I had important plans to be a bum and do nothing today. I expect a badass overtime bonus.”

Curse the Jones men and their insufferable wisecrack, it would truly be the death of Arthur one day he was sure. Arthur grumbled, “I don’t pay you to be a cheeky wanker, tie an apron on and start taking orders.”

“Oh we’re in a wanker-mood today, are we? That’s my favorite Arthur mood.” Samuel teased, slipping behind the counter to stuff away his belongings. He emerged sans a jacket with an apron tied over his feather-gray Kirkland’s t-shirt.

Arthur ignored his bartender’s jabbery, looking upon his establishment with a sigh. Through the aches in his heels and the exhaustion shooting up his spine, he felt his day getting better. He saw it in the eyes of satisfied customers, heard it in the speaker system blasting country music and filling the grill with song like a church is filled with hymns. In the cool air, he breathed triumph.

****

“I’m telling you man, ladies? They dig guys that aren’t afraid to get down and dirty, sweat a little. It’s manly.” Alfred led the way into Kirkland’s, mid-way through a brotherly sermon about wooing women with one’s rippling manliness. Alfred had filed that report in just about three hours after he and Ludwig had parted ways, and after the eventful day he had, it was straight to the bar after he picked Michael up from work.

“Fuck you, you’re only saying that because you wouldn’t drive home so I could take a damn shower.” Michael spat. He ached for a shower, almost as much as he ached for a cold beer.

“I offered to give ya’ a lift man, you were the bloke that missed your chance.” Jett chimed, a hand on Michael’s shoulder, heralding the younger man into Kirkland’s and the blissfully cold air.

Arthur watched the three men walk in and he knew, _he knew_ , his night wasn’t going to end without a shot and a dose of aspirin. Scratch that, a few shots, Arthur was going to need _at least_ that. Maybe if he stayed at one end of the bar, they wouldn’t notice he was working bartender for the night.

“Iggy! What are you doing behind the bar?” Alfred hollered, shattering Arthur’s peaceful illusion that he would get through the night with his sanity intact. Alfred was the first to claim a bar stool, nestled at the far end of the bar counter in the crook separating it from the walkway. Michael and Jett followed suit.

“Trying not to lose every damn one of my bloody marbles.” Arthur eyed them. Michael and Alfred, Arthur saw every week. Jett? It had been a while since Jett Wilson graced Kirkland’s with his presence, and Arthur told him as much.

“Wenn’s been working me like a farm-dog.” Jett squawked defensively, looking at the assorted beer-nozzles on tap like a dog looks at bacon. “Jett take me to the art store, Jett there’s an art contest for school today, Jett we need groceries. I’m a chauffeur in my own house!”

“Dude,” Alfred laughed, a mug of Bud Light already pressed to his lips. Arthur knew the Joneses’ drink preferences well, too well. “She’s like— _eighteen._ Take her to driving school or something.”

“Bah,” Jett waved him off, face like a bitter taste grazed his tongue. “She’s not ready to drive yet, too young.”

“You taught Victoria how to drive when she was nineteen, seems fair enough to me that Wendy learn soon.” Michael quipped, hiding behind the thick glass of his mug to escape the withering glare Jett shot his way.

“You know, I get it.” Alfred assured. Jett’s shoulders relaxed and feel from their defensive haunch. “It’s not that she’s not ready, _you’re_ not ready.”

“Fuck off Al.” Jeff spat. “Eighteen’s too young. I’ll teach her when she’s older.”

“Bro, you’re such a dad.”

“I’m the uncle, I’ve got to keep my kids in one piece and if that means driving a brat around all day, I’ll do that.”

“Hey—hey look, Artie’s eye’s twitching.” Alfred grinned.

Arthur seethed. “It’s been a long day you dolt. I know you’re used to the _lavity_ of doing nothing all day, but some of us work for a living.”

“Hey, I’ve had a long day too Art,” Alfred frowned. “There’s some freaky shit going down in the woods.”

“Are we talking wiccan orgy freaky or—?” Michael grinned like a little shit. The older Jones was far too proud.

“Confidential. Police business, can’t go spilling my work stuff.”

“Speaking of work, funniest shit happened around morning break.” Jett beamed, putting his beer down, wiping his mouth, and adjusting his shoulders like any great storyteller, and Jett was an amazing storyteller. “This guy, Fernandez or something like that—you know the guy I’m talking about, right Mike? Yeah, him—anyways, Fernandez was flipping his shit this morning. I’m telling you, his face was redder than a tomato. I guess he had his truck parked outside of the work zone, so a copy drove by and wrote him a ticket.”

Alfred nearly choked on his beer. He pounded on his chest as cleared his lungs, a prideful glow to his cheeks as he rasped. “Dude, that was me.” He boasted, poking his own chest. “That’s the asshole from the Stop ‘n’ Shop. Rum guy, yeah. Got him on a parking violation.”

“Ticketing someone on a botchy parking violation because you don’t find them pleasant?” Arthur raised a bushy brow and scoffed in that way that was just so uniquely him. “Childish and scummy.”

“Say what you want Iggy,” Alfred drawled, folding his arms behind his head. “I’m pretty proud of myself.”

“I can’t stand another second with you—and no _Alfred_ , I will not sit. I will find more pleasant company to waste my time with—dear _god_ , is that Madeline?”

Arthur abandoned the trio of laughing men, savages if you asked him, and ventured to the opposite end of the bar counter. There sat Madeline Jones-Williams, arms folded on the counter and face buried in her sleeves. She was still wearing her work uniform, but the deputy shirt was hidden away by what looked like the baggies, coziest, definitely belonging to one of her brothers, sweatshirts in existence. Arthur bent down to the countertop. “Oh, Madeline, you alright love?”

She groaned at him. Madeline _groaned_ at him. She never groaned at him—ever.

“Oh good god girl, what’s gotten into you? Did some wanker upset you?”

Madeline sat up, the dark circles under her eyes prominent, locks of hair sticking up in every direction. Every. Single. One. She was a hot mess, and it showed. “It’s been a _long day_.”

“Can I get you a drink to fix... _this_?” Arthur gestured lamely to the half-asleep slumpy disaster that was Madeline herself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Beer, please. And yes,” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples, muttering. “I messed up bad Artie.”

“For god’s sake, don’t tell me you slept with someone. If you’re pregnant I’m killing you myself.”

She shot up, cheeks caked in red. She squawked, “No—no! God, no, I swear I’d never, not like... _that_...at least. No, it was work.” She sighed, burying her face back in her hands. “I had a lead on a case, and then there was this _angry_ guy, and then the lead got away. Artie, it was a disaster.”

“Did a bloke get in your face again? Love, I keep telling you to stick up for yourself. Quit letting assmunches talk down to you.” Arthur frowned, setting a brimming mug of beer down on the bar. If her cloudy mood persisted, Madeline would be nursing the beverage for hours. Or worse, minutes. There was no telling how drunk she would get if the latter was the case. Let it never be said that _anyone_ has accused Madeline Jones-Williams of being a heavyweight, _ever_.

Poor, sweet Madeline. Arthur has had shitty days before, but he would be willing to bet a benjamin hers was worse. She was too timid for her own good, especially for a deputy. It took a lot for the fiery beast of rage that dwelled deep, deep within Madeline to escape. Either a lot of liquor, or a lot of screwing with someone she cared for. Neither of those bred good results, let me tell you that.

“Madeline, _mon dieu_ , what is wrong?” Francis gasped, letting the heavy Kirkland’s door swing shut behind him as soon as his cousin, Lucille, passed through it. Arthur’s eye started twitching again, and it was no coincidence that it started up as soon as Francis Bonnefoy walked through the doors.

“Oh, Francis. Don’t worry, ‘m alright, just a rough day is all.” Madeline explained earnestly, even as the tall, French, pain in Arthur’s ass that was Francis came up behind her to wrap her in a loose, comforting hug.

“Fear not _ma douce_ , Francis will make it all better.” He soothed, plucking her hair clip from her blonde locks. “First thing’s first, we will fix this wild mess.”

“Oh no, Francis, really my hair’s fine, you really don’t have to—”

“Nonsense, I would be a terrible friend if I didn’t offer my expertise.” Francis insisted, smoothing her hair out. “Now, off with the sweatshirt, you’re too old to be hiding in your hoodies.”

“Come off it you frog,” Arthur spat, swatting Francis’s hand away from the hem of Madeline’s borrowed sweatshirt. “Leave sweet Madeline alone and quit being a pervert.”

“A pervert?” Francis countered, raising his hand to his chest in offense. “I am caring for my beloved Madeline, whom I love like I would love my own daughter. There is nothing shameful in doting on her.”

“Doting? More like harassment, get off the dear girl, she doesn’t need your slimy hands all over her!”

“I’ll just uh, go sit with Al and Mike.” Madeline murmured, excusing herself to the opposite end of the bar, leaving the two to bicker. Neither of them noticed her go. She sat down on an empty barstool inbetween Mike and Jett with an airy sigh. She could still hear Arthur and Francis arguing back and forth at the other end.

“Evenin’ Maddie, you’re looking pretty dampe’.” Jett greeted, eying her behind his beer.

“Mm, hello Jett.” She plonked her head on his shoulder before wriggling out of her hoodie and stealing Mike’s beer for her own. He could protest all he wanted, she was older and paid more rent than him. “I got your text Al, how’d it go with Ludwig?”

Alfred snapped back to attention, drawing his eyes from a screen playing some old re-run of a high school football game a few years old. He shrugged, taking a sip from his mug, “Ludwig should be talking with his pack right about—now.”

****

Ludwig breathing in the fresh forest air, appreciating the cool evening breeze as it ushered away the blazing Summer heat. The breeze rustled the spruce and pine trees that towered about his head. He loved the trees, their dark green hue that stayed true even through the hot Texas weather. They had come with the property, his nice three-bedroom, two bath house in the middle of the woods with one long, winding road to connect it to the rest of humanity. It was far too much space for one man living alone, but it suited him and the land was nice. The rich soil that was always so loose and smelled everlastingly like rain. Ludwig loved the rain, its cleansing nature.

The crackling of fire brought him from his thoughts and reminded him of the small audience he had, his guests, but he didn’t yet turn away from staring at the deep depths of the forest. Ludwig was no stranger to the woods. He knew it like the back of his hand, but on nights like these it was hard not to feel like he was surrounded by a danger, no matter how familiar. Danger itself was always familiar.

A warm hand on his shoulder was the final nail in the coffin that dragged him from his own mind, and Ludwig turned around to face the hand’s owner. Feliciano’s lips upturned slightly, gently prodding Ludwig back to the meeting at hand. It was almost time to start.

Ludwig nodded to his lover, his secret lover. God, the thought alone was enough to send warm bubbles through his chest and almost make him forget about the meeting entirely. But, he couldn’t. This meeting was important, dire, even. Feliciano moved gracefully through the fallen leaves that covered the forest floor and took a seat next to his twin on a log bench. They weren’t entirely in the wilderness, just a small clearing a stone’s throw from Ludwig’s cabin. It wasn’t much, a few log benches and a fire pit to light up the meeting spot, but it got the job done and provided privacy in the outdoors that matches more... _public_...places couldn’t match.

Most of the pack had shown up. Antonio and both his brothers took up a log on their own. Down the way was Elizaveta with Roderich consoling her through her sniffles. The Vargas brothers occupied another log, even Romeo, and he was a stunt-bred. The only regular attendee missing was Francis, and Antonio had already informed everyone he wouldn’t be attending; he already had dinner plans with his cousin who’s visiting from abroad, Lucille Bonnefoy. It was time to get the meeting going.

“Alright, let’s get started.” Ludwig grunted, clearing his throat and gathering the pack’s attention. He never understood the power of his own commanding voice, merely let its workings remain a mystery to him. It was better that way.

Antonio’s hand shot up in the air, moving back and forth enthusiastically like a child simply _dying_ to ask a question. He had to love Antonio, and his enthusiasm, even when it wasn’t necessarily appreciated.

Ludwig sighed, “Yes, Antonio?”

“Oh, yeah. Just wanted to ask what the meeting was about. You said it was an emergency?” Antonio beamed, the fire making his lime green eyes seem even more luminous in the night. Next to him, Maximo snorted. He and Carlos were used to Antonio’s demeanor, had been for a long time, so this was nothing new for them. Still, it proved to be funny as fuck—every time. Lovino rolled his eyes from the Vargas log.

“I was...just getting to that.” Ludwig finished lamely, rubbing the back of his neck. Elizaveta broke off in a choked sob, and Roderich tried to comfort her gently, ultimately failing. Ludwig’s face scrunched up with painful sympathy. “Eliza, I thought I asked you to stay home.”

“I—It wouldn’t have done,” Elizaveta shook her head stubbornly, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of a pink, knit sweater. “any good.”

Ludwig wanted to argue with her, but it wasn’t the right place, nor the right time. He could argue with her over the state of her well-being, and the shitty job Roderich was doing of consoling her, later. For now, there was a meeting to attend to. “I’m sure many of you are already aware why I called a meeting so abruptly, but it’s very important that I’ve called all of you out here.”

This was the part where Ludwig diverged from ‘Ludwig,’ the man everyone at the meeting knew him to be, and stepped into the role of ‘Pack Leader,’ a gruffer, meaner, quick to the point man. What a pack leader was _meant_ to be. Everyone else settled into their roles as pack members well enough as well, sitting up a little straighter, some crossing their arms, a few meeting him with apprehension. Nothing new, just another meeting, albeit off schedule, and where the topic was a little more serious.

“There was a murder last night, two of them, just outside of town in a gas station. The victims have been identified as Elizaveta’s cousin Agáta and her partner Jozef.” Ludwig explained, sparing no time for sensitivity. “My officers and I have been tasked with investigating it, along with a string of animal attacks in the woods near the park. We were originally suspecting a vampire as the culprit, but…”

“But?” Lovino cut in, arms folded over his chest and a single dark, auburn brow raised.

Ludwig’s eyes narrowed, just barely noticeable in the firelight, but he continued. Lovino was always one to challenge authority, and that didn’t end nor begin with Ludwig’s pack leadership. “Deputy Jones discovered a pit of deer, all dead, with were-tracks leading to and from it in multiple directions.”

“A _were_ killed Agáta?” Elizaveta cried, shifting with Roderich’s arm around her. She looked at Ludwig like _he_ was the one who put her cousin in a coffin. “How is that any better than a vampire killing her? _How_?”

“I didn’t say it was better,” Ludwig leveled with her, sighing. “For all we know, both of these cases are uncorrelated. That doesn’t stop my suspicions from growing that our pack may not be the only pack in Mason Falls anymore.”

“Another pack did this? Are you serious?” Antonio blurted.

“I don’t know.” Ludwig started, as clearly and simply as he possibly could. This meeting was already dissolving, and he hadn’t gotten his message out yet. God, Gilbert made this look so, so easy. He would know how to keep a pack meeting from melting in disarray. Ludwig too ka deep breath in and exhaled, gathering his wits about him. He could do this. “What I _do know_ is this: if this _is_ a pack, and not a lone-wolf, _or_ a vampire, then this pack could be making moves on territory.”

“What do you suggest we do? We don’t know if it _is_ a pack.” Feliciano interjected, with that constantly friendly tone of his. He could be arguing against you and you would be none the wiser with that tone. He was always on your side, even when he wasn’t.

“Exactly. I spoke with Romulus about the next steps to take, in the even that this _is_ a pack. I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to be wary, but not overly-cautious so as not to escalate anything that might not be a significant threat. For now, we stand our ground. Nothing changes. We stick to what we’ve always done, and we stick together. From now on, until we get to the bottom of what is responsible for these killings, no one runs alone. Woods or otherwise. Not without another member of the pack.”

“What happened to nothing changes?” Lovino raised, scowling.

“Nothing _significant_.” Ludwig specified. “The rule is only in place to keep everyone safe until we get to the bottom of this. I’ve got some of my best officers on this case, it’s only a matter of time before we find out who or what is responsible. We don’t know if what happened in Marble Creek is an isolated incident or not. We must stay vigilant, and that means staying two steps ahead, and _aware_.”

“And if this _does_ turn out to be a pack trying to steal our territory? What then?” Lovino countered.

Ludwig stared at him long and hard, before his gaze fell on the burning fire roaring in its pit. “Then, then we figure out what to do next.”

****

“Ah, can’t you smell it Berwald?” Mathias beamed, grinning ear to ear as he strode up the porch of a large, old home. The white paint was ancient and chipping, but the wood was intact and only creaked _slightly_ under Mathias’s bulk as he hopped up the steps, two at a time.

“The death?” Berwald raised sourly, thick accent highlighting _death_ colorfully, following close behind Mathias with both of their bags. Mathias packed a suitcase, he packed a gym-bag. The rest of their belongings would be arriving by mail, but they needed at least a few clothes here and there in the meantime.

“ _What_? No. The charm Ber, _the charm_.” Mathias laughed, throwing the French double-doors wide open as he walked into the home like he owned the place—because he _did_. The house shifted, the movement of the creaky doors rustled and awakened the dust that coated every surface in the home. “And the dust, we’ll have to get that cleaned up—but it’s no biggie.”

“Y’ bought a shithole, Mat.” Berwald grunted, dropping the bags in the doorway. It had to be the oldest house in the entire town, if not the _state_. The shingles looked like they were a breeze away from protecting the lawn rather than the roof. The floor creaked under their heavy footfalls. The steps looked like death traps. It was the crappiest, most ancient house Mathias could have bought, and it wasn’t cheap either. The for-sale sign still hung in the front yard, boasting two commas, mocking Berwald. Fuck whatever real-estate agent that decided to post that ad Mathias found, this house was a wreck.

“A shithole with character Ber.” Mathias argued, throwing open a few curtains. “These windows aren’t tinted, we’ll have to call the tint guy in tomorrow and sleep under the house. Curtains could use a wash too. Her, Ber, you think they have like some cleaning service that’ll clean the whole house? That sounds like something kids these days would invent, doesn’t it?”

Berwald couldn’t look at him, nor the house for that matter. It was all he could do not to tear the house down board by board. This was a mockery, the final punchline to some shitty joke the universe was playing on him, and Mathias was the jokester. The house, the new job as vampire sheriff, the town. It was all one, big, hilarious, fucking joke.

“Ber? What’re you doing? Come on, sit down! The place is ours now, relax a little before we hit the town and make our presence known!” Mathias laughed and plopped back into a plush red chair. He didn’t seem to mind the flurry of dust that exploded from the cushion under his weight.

    “What?” Berwald reared on him, blond brows furrowing, Swedish accent rolling thick off his tongue in waves. “Whaddya mean ‘make our presence _known_ ’?”

    “Oh, well, I figured we’d have to go meet our new subjects, you know? Make our new leadership known amongst the vampire population.” Mathias shrugged, “Maybe go visit a bar or two afterwards—nights like these are great for it—catch a bite to eat.”

    “Drink from a human?” Berwald narrowed his eyes accusingly.

    “Well— _yeah_ , just a sip. Celebrate the house, our new jobs, but hey—I’ve been a good vampire. I haven’t drank from a human since Christmas. I think I deserve a little sip, y’know? You do too for all that True _Crap_ you’ve been drinking.”

    “Do ya’ think this is a fucking _game_?”

    Mathias stiffened, startled by Berwald’s sudden break in composure, how he raised his voice. A frown crossed his face, small and childish. “Think _what’s_ a game?”

    “ _This_. _This house_. _This job._ You think it’s a reward, _don’tcha_? Some sort of _recompense_ fer’ a job well done?”

    “Yeah, ‘course it is. ‘Cause we deserve i—”

    “We _fucked up_ Mat! _Ya’_ fucked up. Ya’ got yerself noticed by the vampire _king_. The last time ya’ drank from a human, ya’ got us under the king’s fucking radar. This ain’t a reward, it’s a prison sentence Mat. This is him keepin’ an _eye_ on us, ‘cause if we _fuck up_ , if _you_ fuck up, again, he can execute us. Soon as we give him a fuckin’ reason.”

    “I’m not really digging the negativity here, Ber.” Mathias warned, rising from the chair with a challenge in his cerulean eyes. He was provoking Berwald, inviting him to take out his aggression in a more physical way. A fight. _Of course_ , Mathias was always itching for a fight, it was in his blood—his _viking_ blood, his bloodthirsty fucking blood. Berwald never wanted to fight, he didn’t want to be a sheriff, but here he was. Here he was, in the world’s shittiest McMansion. Here he was, in some hoe-dunk town he already forgot the name of. Here he was, the vampire sheriff of a district miles away from Stockholm. Because of _Mathias_.

    He could kill him. He should kill him. Berwald should snap one of those chair legs in half like a toothpick and bury it spine-deep in Mathias’s chest. It was his fault they were in this situation. If Mathias could just keep under the radar like him, could resist draining a human dry the second he sunk his fangs into one, then the vampire king never would have even knew their _names_. If the vampire king knew your name, you had one foot in the coffin already.

    But he couldn’t. He couldn’t kill Mathias, not for every ounce of anger in his bloodstream, whether he was capable of it or not. Berwald turned on his heel, coat still on, heading for the door. “I’m goin’ out.”

    “What? Ber, can we _talk_ about thi—” Mathias started before he was cut off when Berwald slammed the door behind him, rattling the light fixtures and further disturbing the dust. Mathias’s shoulders slumped as he moped about, flopping back into the dusty chair. A moment of silence followed before he cupped his hands and shouted after Berwald, who was long gone, “Fine! Leave then, _but I’m_ picking the better bedroom! Yeah, how do you feel about _that_!?”

****

    That’s how Berwald wound up at Kirkland’s, well around eight o’clock and right about time for the evening rush to still be running strong. He had wanted to find somewhere secluded, somewhere to gather his thoughts, but then he found himself at Kirkland’s. A bar. Typical. He couldn’t even bury his sorrows in alcohol, and yet he still sought out the one place where someone could do exactly that. Someone that wasn’t him.

    He could leave, _should_ leave, but somehow he didn’t want to. Maybe Mathias’s enthusiasm, however misplaced, had left an impression on him. They were fucked either way, right? Might as well make the best of it, and right now, the best of it seemed like it would be some shitty synthetic blood at a dive-bar in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.

    Which was fine by Berwald, so long as no one talked to him and he could spend his time wallowing in silence and the _smell_ of liquor, like that would be a sufficient substitute for the elation of intoxication that had evaded him for going on centuries now. He could tell the atmosphere was entirely wrong for wallowing in self-pity the moment he walked in, but he didn’t walk out. It was too late for that now, his anger had taken control and the red, angry beast desired a drink surrounded by mortals and the odor of alcohol and bubbly laughter and warm conversation—the things he denied himself.

    There was a clear divide at the bar, an empty gap in the middle where clearly no one wanted to sit. The ends were crowded. Middle it was. He could feel eyes on him as he walked through the front doors, but they were gone by the time he sat down. A stranger could only be so interesting in a town like Mason Falls, especially when there was a murder in the next town over to gossip about. A new face was hardly dripping with juicy drama like a murder.

    It had been far too long since Berwald was in a bar. When was the last time? 2008? Yeah, sounded about right. It was just around New Year’s, too, a crazy, wild New Year’s. The same New Year’s Berwald swore he’d never drink from a human again. Berwald didn’t like thinking about the New Year’s of 2008.

    “Heyyo, sorry about the wait. Nights like these are always so busy, and I wasn’t aware that silence and spontaneously leaving meant, ‘hey, Sammy, you’re on bar-duty now.’” A blond man in a smock laughed heartily, a gesture that shook his daffodil locks. His name-tag read Samuel. “What can I get ya’?”

    Berwald stared at the sign, just above the colorful array of liquor bottles, the one that boasted Krewland’s, or whatever the place was called, he had already forgotten, was an establishment that served True Blood. “True Blood, B-positive, please.”

    The bartender did a double-take, one so small Berwald probably wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t a vampire. Samuel blinked before grinning. “Yeah, got it chief. One True Blood coming your way. Warmed up, I assume?”

    “Please.” Berwald confirmed, watching the bartender move behind the counter with steely indigo eyes. He pulled a B+ from a tiny fridge, and Berwald was starting to think there must not be as many vampires running around Mason Falls as Mathias was hoping for. Good, better for the human population that way.

    “Here ya’ go. Name for your tab?” Samuel slid him the warmed up blood and pulled a little notepad from his apron, pen-click at the ready.

    Berwald pressed the warm bottle to his lips and took a sip. Same shitty taste as always, with the added satisfaction of knowing it didn’t come from someone’s neck. “Berwald.”

    “Alright Berwald,” The bartender breathed with a friendly grin, “I’ll just be down the way serving those folks. Holler if you need me.”

    Berwald barely nodded in acknowledgement, too enthralled with listening to the group down the bar from him. Sure, maybe it was rude to use advanced hearing to eavesdrop on someone’s conversation, but Berwald only called it fair that they were clearly talking about him. Which is ruder: talking behind someone’s back, or listening in?

    A bleach blonde woman with thin brown glasses was leaning close to a man that looked similar to her, a brother maybe. She whispered without cruelty, “Hey Al, I think that gentleman down there’s drinking True Blood. I’ve never seen a vampire in Kirkland’s before.”

    Berwald didn’t have to look to know the man the woman was talking to, was looking at him now. He heard a scoff, a grumpy little noise from the man as he grunted quietly back to the woman, “No wonder the beer started tasting bitter.”

    Nothing Berwald hadn’t heard before, and hardly surprising either. What _was_ surprising was when the woman audibly smacked the man’s arm, rolling her eyes. “Shut up and drink your beer, and be _nice_. He’s just like any other person.”

    That warmed him up more than the True Blood did, and the True Blood was so hot he was shocked it hadn’t burned the bartender’s hand. Poor kid probably didn’t want to make it obvious he accidentally microwaved the blood too long. Lukewarm blood or blistering hot blood, it all went down the same.

    “He’s a vamp Maddie, you _know_ what they do.” The man argued quietly, now a darker haired, younger man was leaning in closer to hear them. They all shared the same facial features.

    “Just because a guy has fangs doesn’t make him cruel Al. He looks new to town. He probably needs a friend.”

    “Maddie don’t—”

    “Hush it, All. Quit being such a grump.”

    And then, there was suddenly a young woman at his side. She couldn’t have been any older than her twenties, with bright violet eyes that were brought out by the freckles that dusted across her cheeks. She smiled at him, “I couldn’t help but notice, but I don’t think I’ve seen you around this place before.”

    “New. Just moved here.” Berwald grunted, halfway through his drink and maybe not quite as itching for his next one as he was _before_ the woman had wandered up with her friendly smile and shy eyes.

    “I’m Madeline Jones-Williams,” The woman introduced herself, gesturing down to the end of the bar where three men stared after her. “Those are my brothers, and our friend Jett. Don’t mind them if they aren’t the friendliest, they’re a bunch of knuckleheads.”

    “They’re scared, I don’t blame ‘em.”

    “So a vampire, huh? We don’t tend to get many of those around here.” Madeline sidled up in the seat next to him. If Berwald were a more dense man, or a human who couldn’t hear every word Madeline had said before she’d decided to come be friendly, he would probably think she was flirting with him. She wasn’t, he knew, this was just her being neighborly, but that fact didn’t make him appreciate her gesture any less.

    “We tend to avoid small towns, typically. Harder fer us to stick out.”

    “I can understand that,” Madeline smiled, gaze lowering to her beer. “The people around here can have their heads a little stick up their behinds, but there’s some of us that know what it’s like to not exactly fit in.”

    Berwald grunted in affirmation, entranced. It had been so long since he had a conversation, a _true, genuine_ conversation, with someone who wasn’t Mathias. It was as refreshing as a dunk in a cold pool on a hot day.

    “So what I’m getting at here is,” She beamed. “Don’t be too wary too warm up to people. If you even are—for all I know you could just be the quiet type, silly of me to assume—oh, god, I’m rambling now, aren’t I?”

    He thought she was hilarious, and maybe it was the warm bar, or perhaps it was the presence of a genuinely _pleasant_ conversation, either way— _something_ was responsible for the way his lips quirked up at the corners—feintly, just barely there, but there no less.

    “So vampires _do_ have a sense of humor, I take it?” Madeline piped up, grinning smally despite herself and her flustered state.

    “Quite.” Berwald hummed, that tiny smile now playing on his lips in full swing as he looked the grill over once more. It was almost home-y, in a way. Families across the room from the bar stuck to the booths lined along the moonlit windows; children with their parents, friends sharing a bite to eat, couples sharing a kiss. Laughter, and a few games of pool, shouting whenever the home team scored on one of the T.V. screens mounted above everyone’s heads—it was all so incredibly mundane and exquisitely overwhelming that Berwald couldn’t help it when he sucked in a chilly breath and exhaled, “This town, it’s not bad.”

    And Madeline—he almost forgot she was there entirely—she must’ve figured it was _her_ he was speaking to, not himself, and the stars above, and whatever pitiful spirits of the night were wandering around aimlessly. Madeline laughed, “Yeah, we’re a pretty nice little place once you get to know us.”

    He nodded wordlessly, but that must’ve sufficed, because the next moment she was raising her warm-by-now mug of whatever Kirkland’s had on tap. “To new friends?” She raised a brow as high as her mug.

    Berwald blinked, lost in that quiet contemplation that felt entirely too warm and sounded like static. He raised his bottle to meet her mug, a pact, a promise, a gesture that meant nothing and everything all at once. “To new friends.”

    “There you go, _now_ you’re one of us.” Madeline grinned toothily as the two vessels met in a clank of glass. She was an odd one, Berwald concluded, but odd wasn’t always a bad thing.

    And as Berwald raised his bottle back to his lips, he could have sworn the True Blood that trickled down his throat taste impossible sweet—though the bottle hadn’t changed, and neither had the blood. It still tasted like synthetic shit, but sweet synthetic shit was arguably _always_ a step up. _Maybe this won’t be as much of a disaster._ He thought to nobody in particular. _Maybe_.

****

“ _Oh don’t worry, we won’t bug you Lovi. Oh but Lovi_ , _you don’t have to worry about us. We’ll get out of your hair Lovi, don’t sweat it_ —my _ass_.” Lovino snarled, arms crossed over his chest like a stone relief that only knew how to be angry.

“I’m sorry Lovi, I didn’t know you’d be going to Kirkland’s too,” Antonio laughed, holding the heavy wooden door open as Lovino scowled, halfway over the boundary between the noisy grill and the outside world.

“Believe me, it’s not my _choice_.” Lovino spat, “Nonno locked the house again before the old jackass left to play poker with his asshole friends at the retirement community, and I left _my_ keys there.”

“Do you not have a spare key?” Carlos drawled, following closely behind Lovino as Antonio joined them and grinned at Francis who waved at them from the booth he sat at with Lucille.

“ _Oh_! What a _dumbass_ I am, it just _completely_ slipped my mind to use the _spare key_.” Lovino mocked with an exasperatedly sarcastic tone that had Carlos’s eyes narrowing dangerously. Whatever redeemable quality his brother seemed to find in the angry Italian man, Carlos would never know, but he _did_ know that if Lovino didn’t get out of his face in .0009 seconds he was going to get very angry, very fast. “Of course we have a spare key, do you _think_ I’m an idiot? My dumbass little brother lost his copy and he hasn’t had the sense to replace it yet, so he’s running around god-knows-where with the spare to _my place_ , like an _idiot_.”

“Look! There’s Francis,” Antonio beamed, putting his hands on Lovino’s shoulders and spurring him forward. “Let’s go eat with him!”

“Why in the fuck would I want to eat with you _or_ that pervert—” Lovino started before Antonio cut him off.

“Francis!” Antonio greeted with a cheery grin, hands still on his cousin’s shoulders as the latter contemplated murder. “Funny running into you here!”

“You knew he was here, bastard,” Lovino hissed, but his comments went ignored.

“Antonio! Sit down, sit down, you remember Lucille?” Francis grinned, gesturing about the booth.

“Of course,” Antonio laughed, “Hola Lucille, welcome home, you’re looking as beautiful as ever.”

“Toni, still a flirt.” Lucille greeted, looking at the man pointedly as three of them slid into the empty side of the booth. Lovino’s frown grew sourer.

“But of course, we are best friends after all—and best friends think alike.” Francis grinned easily, French accent particularly heavy with the liberal amount of wine he had thus far consumed that night, “What brings you all to Kirkland’s, did you miss me?”

“No, it’s the only bar in town, _dumbass_.” Lovino scowled. “Where else are you supposed to get piss-drunk on the cheap?”

“Ah of course, always the reason to go out on Friday nights like these, eh Lovino?” Lovino replied smoothly. Lovino saw red, and if it weren’t for Antonio’s hand that flew to his arm to keep him seated and rooted in place, the sugar container would have found its way into Francis’s face.

“Heh, heh—hey, Lovino, why don’t we go get drinks for everyone? On me?” Antonio raised, grinning despite knowing full-well of the cat fight he was preventing. Antonio adored Lovino, anyone could see that much, but he knew the other man well enough to _also know_ that if he didn’t get Lovino away from Francis it was going to get real ugly, real fast.

“Nonsense, there’s a waiter right there,” Francis interrupted, smiling devilishly as he flagged down a passing Samuel. “Ah, Jones number three, can we get some drinks and refills? On _me_ , of course.”

“Sure thing,” Samuel grinned, pulling his pen from his smock pocket and a little notepad to boot. “What can I get for y’all?”

“I…”Antonio trailed on, shooting Lovino an apologetic look. Something’s just couldn’t be helped. Then again, he should’ve known better, he really should have. Mixing an intoxicated Francis with Lovino was like mixing cats with dogs. Francis, the drunk, sly cat, and Lovino the excitably grumpy dog. God help them all. “Will take a coke?”

And as Antonio met Lovino’s scalding glare head-on, and the Italian man grumbled his order for the driest red wine they had, Antonio knew. There was going to be hell to pay.

****

“Alright Artie, I’ve got an order for a refill on an Arnold Palmer, a pint of Dos, a coke, and two glasses of Yellow Moon Red.” Samuel relayed, dropping the slip of paper in a jar behind the bar counter. He was starting to regret marathoning The Office that morning rather than trying to salvage a pathetic night’s worth of sleep. Still, a Friday night at Kirkland’s was not a night to be missed, even if he was on the wrong side of the bar. “Also, before I forget, Feliks just clocked in so orders should be coming out faster now that Abel’s not flying solo.”

“Great, I’ll have that drink order filled by the time you swing back around.” Arthur replied without missing a beat. “And Samuel, for god’s sake, take a bloody break.”

“No promises.” Samuel chimed, snatching a plate from the window. Man, he was hungry, and a basket of fries wasn’t sounding too bad right now.

“Little idiot.” Arthur shook his head, scoffing under his breath. Maybe he needed to have a work seminar about the self-destructive tendencies of his employees. He’s not sure what that would accomplish, but the idea was nothing short of entertaining, if nothing else.

Arthur sighed, looking out over the bar, surveying. He imagined he was a captain in a past life, a renowned captain with a ship _much_ bigger than a bar, and a crew so large the mere _sight_ of them could intimidate his enemies. He imagined he spent a lot of time on the bow, his past captain self, looking out over the seven seas that he had conquered himself, the ship and the reputation and the crew, all he had _built_ for himself, and it was glorious. Maybe in all of his past lives he was nothing but South of a piss-poor farm boy. That was a lot more likely, but looking out over Kirkland’s, _his_ Kirkland’s, all the smiling faces and raucous laughter, he sure felt a lot like a captain. And his bar, like a long life spent on the seven seas, felt nothing short of glorious.

“Heeey, Art, mind pourin’ me another?” Arthur was torn away from his thoughts without mercy, blinking as he stared at Tino.

“What?”

“Another vodka Artie. Geez, I know I’m older, but I think _you_ need to get your hearing—uh—checked.” Tino giggled, and Arthur didn’t even need to absorb the content of his slurred words to know that Tino was well on his way to plastered. There was no telling how long ago Tino had traded in sipping his beer in favor of showing Arthur’s array of vodkas who was boss, but it _had_ to have been a terrifyingly impressive amount of shots ago.

“Yeah, I’ll get on that…” Arthur muttered to Tino and nothing at the same time, thoughts far too occupied with the smell of the salty sea and waves crashing against a wooden hull. And to think, Arthur had never even been on a boat before.

Tino hummed to himself, admiring the game as he watched a linebacker tackle a running back—at least, and he laughed to himself at this, he _thought_ that’s what they were called. Right next to him, hardly an empty barstool away from him, was just about the most threateningly attractive man Tino had ever laid eyes on. Mr. Danger-Cheeks—that’s what Tino had settled on calling him from now on to eternity—was completely invested in the in the T.V. above their heads, almost fanatically, in fact. From what Tino could tell, he was hyper-focused on an insurance commercial parodying—awfully, Tino’s drunken self added—Swedish pop music. Like your mooooves, the T.V. sang—at least, Tino considered that to be singing—and Mr. Danger-Cheeks’ shoulders shook with a silent laugh. Gosh, if Tino were a little more sober he might even consider trying to make a new friend and talking to him, but he’d never do that, not while he was dru—

“Oh. Hi there.” Tino found the words leaving his mouth without proper reviewal, consent, and most importantly, filter. Oh, the wonders that alcohol could do for making shy lips looser. There was a naughty joke in there somewhere, but the space in Tino’s head was far too warm and fuzzy to find it right this moment.

Mr. Danger-Cheeks blinked, looking around like he wasn’t quite sure who was speaking to, because surely it couldn’t be the petite blond man that swayed on his feet next to him. And then, Mr. Danger-Cheeks’ eyes landed on him, his steely, steely eyes. His gaze was taking off almost as soon as it landed, and the man grunted low in his chest. “Hello.”

Now that, that was interesting. Tino was rightfully intrigued, and the buzz certainly wasn’t hurting. “My name’s Tino, I’m waiting on my drink.”

“That’s...nice.”

“Oh yah, shouldn’t be too much longer now. I’m here with my friend and her sister—oh well, I suppose only half-sister—ah, but you’d never guess it looking at the two of them!”

“I imagine.” Mr. Danger-Cheeks nodded. There was this skeptical look in his eyes—confused, maybe, and undeniably _articulating_.

“What about you?” Tino grinned wryly as Arthur swung by with two vodka-straights, a distant look in his eyes like a man staring out across an endless expanse of sea-meets-the-sky horizon.

Now Mr. Danger-Cheeks must have realized that Tino had no intention of grabbing his drinks and skedaddling before he had achieved what he sought out to do—whatever that was, even Tino wasn’t quite sure. Someone, somewhere, probably was. Probably.

“Just me.” Mr. Danger-Cheeks sighed, but it wasn’t the sigh of a particularly lonely man, nor a man who was faced with acknowledging he was alone, rather a man who was settling in for the long haul.

“Oh that must be nice, I think.” Tino sighed airily, taking a dainty shot glass between his pudgy fingers. “What are you drinking there? Is it a beer? I had this _awesome_ beer here once, tried to find it at the grocer but I couldn’t seem to track it down. Ever had that happen to you before?”

“Not really,” Mr. Danger-Cheeks grunted, and even drunk, Tino could sense there was more to his answer, something he was holding back, but that was fine by Tino. Any conversation was still a conversation, and Tino _loved_ to talk. “True Blood...is about all I drink.”

“Oh.” Tino blinked. Time stopped for a moment. The universe found the cable remote—it got sat on, again, pressed the pause button to resume, and time started ticking once more. “I’ve never tried that before, is it any good?”

Mr. Danger-Cheeks’ dark brows found their way into his hairline as he seemed to grasp the conversation before him and he cleared his throat. “Even fer vampires, it’s an...acquired taste.”

“Oh a vampire,” Tino giggled, “no wonder you’re so handsome.”

That must not have been what Mr. Danger-Cheeks had been expecting him to see, because his eyes blew as wide as saucers. The gravity in the room had changed, his entire demeanor shifted, fish now walked on land. “I—”

Mr. Danger-Cheeks was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass, and a dozen pairs of eyes all flew to the center of the bar where two men and a mug smashed beyond all recognition seemed to be, at a glance, doing their own spin on vaudeville humor—improv-style. The two men were, of course, one Francis Bonnefoy—never one to be left out when there was a ruckus to cause and a scene to make—and who even Tino, in his drunken-state, recognized as the town butcher: Louie Bontamp. This, somehow, didn’t bode well, not well at all.

“What in the ever lovin’ fuck, asshole.”  Louie, a tall and stout man who sported wife-beaters like a fashionless gumwad sported denim on denim, spat. Contrary to popular belief, wife-beaters are _extraordinary_ for drying up beer, as demonstrated when Louie’s managed to absorb half of whatever tasteless beer had been in his mug _before_ Francis smacked right into him and sent his beer hurtling towards an untimely death.

“Oh that is _unfortunate_ ,” Francis sighed, swaying on his feet as he leaned heavily on Antonio who grinned nervously.

“Unfortunate?” Louie raised in a fury, gesturing at his shirt wildly as his face contorted like a piece of twisting raw meat. “You owe me a new beer, jackass!”

“Well that’s too bad, I do not pay for _piss_.”

“What the fuck was that—”

“Woah, woah woah—” Antonio interjected, positioning himself between Francis and Louie with a smile so big and shaky on his face that it looked like could threaten to slide off. “Amigos, amigos! I think we just got off to the wrong start here.” He amended, holding his hands amicably in Louie’s direction, “Please, excuse my friend, he’s had far too much wine to drink. We will just take him home, you don’t have to worr—”

“Oh _no you don’t_ , I want a new beer,” Louie frowned, looking at Antonio and spitting every ounce of friendliness back in his face. “ _And_ an apology!”

“I’m sure we can work something out—”

“No!” Francis proclaimed indignantly and, in every sense of the word, plastered. “I will _not_ apologize, it was a mistake! And he spilled beer on my shoes!”

“Frannie, please—”

“You wanna go jackass?” Louie sneered, pushing Antonio aside in order to shove Francis off his balance and very nearly into a table full of patrons. A man at Louie’s side crossed his arms, Tino vaguely recognized him as Louie’s cousin—Baron.

“Hey!” Antonio frowned, helping Francis back to his feet, “There’s no need for violence, you can take that somewhere else, it was only a beer.”

“No! This means w—war now!” Francis slurred, rising to his full, and very unsteady height.

“Francis, do not start a fight where there isn’t one—” Antonio hissed before he found himself stumbling over his own feet and finding purchase leaning against a pillar.

“Did you just shove him?” Lovino sneered, practically huffing in Louie’s face as Antonio groped for the sleeve of Lovino’s jacket to pull him back and away. Carlos was long gone from the booth, looming next to Francis’s shoulder like a guard dog ready to snap at command. No one goes around shoving _one_ Fernandez unless they’re prepared to deal with every _other_ Fernandez, too.

“Hey! No fighting in my bar!” Arthur snapped, slamming a freshly-wiped out mason jar down on the counter as he nodded to Samuel when his warning seemed to go unheard and the blond man serving as waiter for the evening began to make his way over to the scene.

“Are you going to get out of my face, or are we going to have a big problem here?” Louie breathed, almost nose to nose with Francis. Francis opened his mouth, and a crack broke in between hell’s floodgates.

Carlos threw the first punch, at least, his landed first—square in the middle of Louie Bontamp’s dumb face with a sick crack that had even Mr. Danger-Cheeks wincing. That, was most definitely a broken nose.

“Yo’ shun of a b _hi_ tch.” Louie squealed like a pig before dinnertime, propped up by his cousin Baron as the rest of his ragtag redneck posse jumped to his defense and Louie moved to take a swing at Carlos.

“BAR FIGHT!” A far-too-intoxicated-girl that Tino was _fairly positive_ was the Laroche's oldest daughter Maela cried from atop the grill table she had claimed as her own perch. Man, that Maela was a Bahamian looker, but she found herself on the wrong side of the law way too often.

“Alright that’s enough!” Samuel hollered at the top of his lungs, arms crossed over the front of his chest as he frowned, “Now everybody just calm down, there’s no need to fight—”

That, _that_ was the moment hell’s entire fucking damn decided to implode on itself and unleash the wrath of seven circles upon hell, because Baron Bon-fucking-tamps decided to glock none other than Samuel Jones in the jaw. In a very calm-before-the-storm type fashion, no one dared to say a word. You could cut the silence clean through with a meat-cleaver. And then—

“Mother _fucker_.” Samuel snapped, and the brawl resumed like it had never been interrupted to begin with, with a few more fists flying than before. Somewhere, Arthur groaned exasperatedly.

“Has this…” Tino was suddenly drawn away from observing the fight by a quiet, solemn voice that he barely managed to hear over the sounds of shouting and fisticuffs. Mr. Danger-Cheeks cleared his throat as her continued, “Has this happened before?”

“Huh?” Tino raised before he broke out in a laugh and shook his head, downing his second shot. The first one had disappeared sometime ago, right about the time Maela climbed atop the table and declared it was an old-fashioned bar fight, like it needed an announcement. “Oh, yah. Nights like these are always crazy you know.”

“I take it this happens a lot, then.” Mr. Danger-Cheeks sighed wistfully, holding his bottle in both hands as the two of them sat with their backs to the bar counter, watching the fight as it slowly lost moment. It was far more efficient to end bar fights when there were two deputies in the house, and one of the prime instigators just so happens to glock their little brother in the face.

Mr. Danger-Cheeks seemed caught off guard, as if he didn’t expect Tino to suddenly start laughing, that genuine laughter from deep in his chest, and smiled like the sun breaking through clouds as he spoke, “Yeah, pretty much.”

Mr. Danger-Cheeks frowned for a moment, before he snorted softly, raising his bottle to his lips. “Nice little town ya’ got here.”

“Yah, I agree.” Tino giggled, a lilting noise like church music on a Sunday. Maybe it was the vodka-straights, or maybe it was the straight _elation_ of being first-hand witness to a Kirkland’s-style bar fight, but Tino could have sworn he saw Mr. Danger-Cheeks smile. It was a quick one, a here-one-moment-and-gone-the-next phenomena, but something about it made Tino’s stomach feel bubbly—bubbly _and warm_ , like champagne that got nuked in a microwave. A peculiar thought, but as the Kirkland’s patrons began to slowly trickle out the door, and the country music station playing over the speakers switched over to its night-time tracks, Tino decided that the bubbly feeling in his gut had less to do with the drinks, and more to do with the drinking company.

****

    Ludwig sighed. The meeting could have, admittedly, gone better than it had, but in terms of meetings—there have been worse. Far, far worse.

    He rubbed the spot between his brows, bidding the pain to going away, come back when he wasn’t already nursing sore shoulders and an injured pride. It wasn’t a complete disaster, even he had to admit that, all self-deprecation aside. He could have reigned in certain... _members_ , a bit better, but even under Gilbert’s command no meeting when perfectly smooth. That thought alone sent a wave of nausea to the pit of his stomach. If he was just a better leader, if he just didn’t leave room for doubting his command then maybe—

    “Mmm, it’s such a nice night, hm?” And then there were suddenly arms around his waist, a warm Italian accent that dripped like syrup in his ear, and an ungodly noise like a dying duck leaving his throat. Oh, Ludwig could kill him.

    “ _Liebling_ ,” He groaned, turning in the loose cage of tanned arms that looped around his midsection. “We _talked_ about this, you cannot go around sneaking up on me—I could have seriously hurt you.”

    “I am no delicate flower,” Feliciano snorted, this beautiful sound, as he waved him off and started fiddling with his tie. “I can handle myself. It’s you that should be worried about what _I_ could do to _you_ , _Mr. Sheriff_.”

    “Feli,” Ludwig whined, catching the Italian man’s hands in his own before they could travel much further south of his tie. “Liebe, we can’t do that here.”

    “And what is it that you think I’m doing, officer?” Feliciano smirked like he knew he was sex in black slacks—which he was, of that there was no denying, but that didn’t mean he needed to _know_ all the terribly un-officer-like-things he was stirring up in Ludwig’s head.

    “ _Feli_ ,” Now his hands had slipped back into their own control, playing with the buttons on Ludwig’s uniform, and relishing just how red the sheriff’s cheeks were getting. “Someone might _see_.”

    And then one of those glorious hands raised a finger to Ludwig’s lips and silenced him, “We’re in the woods, and you have no neighbors, _besides_ …”

    Ludwig really didn’t like the way Feliciano trailed off like that. Except that was a blatant lie. He loved it, in fact he probably enjoyed it too much, far too much than an officer of the law, that wasn’t supposed to be dating hot Italian men that could make Aphrodite’s panties wet, really should.

    “Outdoor sex has always been something I’ve wanted to cross off the bucket list,” Feliciano’s voice was a purr, and Ludwig was beginning to suspect he had taken a class on how to be just about the most seductive thing on the face of the Earth. If Feliciano were a siren and Ludwig were a sailor, he would’ve drowned a long, long time ago.

    “ _Liebling_ ,” Ludwig whined once more, the last straw, the final argument, his last defense against this terrible onslaught of what had to be the sexiest display known to werewolf-kind.

They both knew who had already won, they knew it before the meeting had even ended. There was no way Ludwig was supposed to defend against this, and that was all part of the plan. Feliciano truly was an evil mastermind when it came to getting his lover deliciously bothered. Why else would he wear that dark, steely blue dress shirt that fit him in all the right places? It certainly wasn’t for his intern Victoria, he’ll tell you that. No, Feliciano only ever dressed for one thing—to win.

“I heard nights like these are great for it,” Feliciano whispered, leaning in for kill as he claimed Ludwig’s lips for his own and the moonlight lit his amber eyes up in a way that could only be described as purely _predatory_. Ludwig tried not to give in, he really did, but like most times when it came to Feliciano—he was doomed from the start.

   

    And somehow, somewhere, there was a cabin. A wood-cabin—a homey little place, in fact—with three bedrooms, and two bathrooms and a living-room with windows taller than many men. In this cabin, not a soul was home; this lights were off, the windows open, the air undisturbed. Something rattled a bird-cage, this old metal thing welded long ago that creaked like ancient bones, and the little yellow canary inside startled, peering out into the room. It was pitch black—cut through by only the moonlight filtering in from the windows taller than many men—and in the dark the canary met a gaze, a gaze with eyes as red as crimson.

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY IT'S AN EXTRA LONG ONE CAUSE I AM A TERRIBLE PROCRASTINATOR WITH TOO MANY WIPs. To put this in perspective, I was a sophomore when I started writing this chapter and I'm two months from being a senior :// oops. I realized I messed up Abel's name in the last chapter, so I fixed that, and a few more things inbetween here and there. BUT I REFUSE TO START THIS OVER AGAIN SO HERE WE GO. Not beta'd, we die like men.
> 
> (In order of Appearance)  
> Alfred F. Jones — America  
> Herakles Karpusi — Greece  
> Ludwig Beilschmidt — Germany  
> Christos Alexopoulos — Cyprus  
> Lovino Vargas — South Italy  
> Romulus Vargas — Rome  
> Antonio Fernandez — Spain  
> Carlos Fernandez — Mexico  
> Madeline Jones-Williams — Canada  
> Maximo Fernandez — Cuba  
> Arthur Kirkland — England  
> Emma Mogens — Belgium  
> Abel Mogens — Netherlands  
> Tino Vainamonnen — Finland  
> Lovise Bondevik — Norway  
> Emy Bondevik — Iceland  
> Samuel Jones — Texas  
> Michael F. Jones — Mollossia  
> Jett Wilson — Australia  
> Francis Bonnefoy — France  
> Lucille Bonnefoy — Monaco  
> Elizaveta Hedervary-Edelstein — Hungary  
> Roderich Edelstein — Austria  
> Romeo Vargas — Seborga  
> Berwald Oxenstierna — Sweden  
> Mathias Kohler — Denmark  
> Louie Bontamp — Louisiana

**Author's Note:**

> That's a wrap folks. As always, feedback is appreciated. I love reading comments, and kudos are my sustenance. Feel free to drop a comment below or dab on that kudos button. If you would like to contact me with questions or comments personally you can hit me up on my tumblr @postmodernrevolutionist. Peace, nerds.


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